Published by James Laver Printing Co Ltd, Liverpool. £3.50

Here is an attempt to replace the out-of-print North Wales and Anglesey Pilot, by Glazebrook and Sheldrick, published by Yachting Monthly. It covers less of the coast than the YM pilot, though it contains more pages. Its manner of writing is more discursive, less severely functional, but it does not actually give more information. The sketch charts are larger, more numerous and very clear, but not as detailed. There are, of course, useful facts given about the situation in 1976, whereas the earlier version was corrected up to 1972 from publication in 1961. The Anglesey oil terminal, for instance, and its effect on coastal sailing, is fully discussed. Another good point is the way Dr Kemp makes sense of the peculiar tides of the area. The only other publications I know which go into sufficient and clear detail about them are the Admiralty West Coast Pilot, and my 1956 edition of the large scale Admiralty chart of the Menai Straits. (Later editions may also contain this useful chartlet, which is reproduced in Bulletin 74, but the later edition I have omits it).

However, this new guide has its disadvantages from our point of view. Dr Kemp is unashamedly a deep draught yachtsman. Nothing less than a fathom of water is of much interest to him. He rightly tells us how Henry Glazebrook’s original ‘inshore passage’ was based on years of sailing a 14 foot dinghy among the inshore rocks of Anglesey, but dismisses all this as irrelevant to cruising yachts, which had better keep well away from such places. So we are told nothing of the upper part of Maltraeth Bay, are told that Traeth Dulas is suitable for only houseboats, and warned off many crowded anchorages in which a dinghy can always find room to lie inshore of the moorings (out of the strength of the tide often, too) or on top of a bank which dries so high that it has not been popular with those laying moorings. There are anchorages among the rocks he so dislikes, too. Keep well clear of the rocks which run out from Llanddwyn Island, he says. Following the clear guidance of the YM pilot I have sailed and rowed happily among these strange stacks of the Trident, and once, while we were enduring an uncomfortable anchorage in a northerly blow, in the orthodox place inside Abermenai Point, a twenty-footer came in, having spent a quiet night sheltering at anchor right in between the prongs of the Trident.

Dr Kemp does tell us explicitly why he differs from Glazebrook, though, and we can translate a good deal of his information into dinghy terms, and venture into waters which he would not find suitable.

If you have no copy of the YM pilot, this is well worth the £3.50 it costs. If you have still a usable copy of Glazebrook and Sheldrick, though, it really isn’t vitally important to add this to your library.