Round the Island Cruise Provisional

Round The Island Cruise 1 day Rally 5th September 2026

This is not a race! It's a sailing-in-company event for HYC so it's a little different to our normal rallies. Sailing boats are invited to join us as we try to sail right round The Isle Of Wight in a day. With HW Portsmouth being at 06:00 BST on 5th September the conditions should be very similar to the RTIR earlier this year but this is not a race. Instead, sailors are invited to join us at the start, an imaginary line between Gilkicker Point and Ryde Spire, at about 06:00 (or earlier) and keep a note of their own times and progress. The end point is No. 4 Bar Buoy i.e. the start of the Small Boat Channel on the way back in to Portsmouth Harbour.

This early start should allow us all to get past The Needles before the tide turns. Sailing skippers are encouraged to invite the motor boaters onto their boats to increase the fun. Motor boaters who choose not to join the "rag and stick" bunch may choose to come out and keep us company and puzzle over just why we do it! After the cruise, we plan to have evening dinner at The Creek at Haslar (TBC) to compare notes and claim bragging rights but of course this is not a race! Even if you don't want to take part in the cruise you can still come along to the The Creek for the evening meal to hear all the tall tales! Just book a "Social - no boat" ticket to reserve your place at The Creek.

We successfully staged this event back in 2021 and had a crack at it in 2025 and those who took part really enjoyed it. We kept tabs on each other, exchanged text messages and even had people looking out for us from the shore of the Island!

A Rally Lead will be available to help with questions and bookings and we will also need someone to write an event report - see Duty Roster below. We suggest monitoring on Ch11 (Portsmouth Harbour) and Ch 12 (Southampton VTS) as appropriate together with Channel 16. We'll probably create a WhatsApp group for those who take part or want to compare notes and track progress.

It's a different sort of event for HYC members and should appeal to those who would like to sail around the Island in a day but without the pressure of doing it with thousands of other vessels.

And did we mention: it's not a race!

Last updated 6:47pm on 3 December 2025