Producing a new edition of the Shell Channel Pilot after the retirement of Tom Cunliffe was always going to be a challenge.

The two sides of La Manche are among the waterways of the world most heavily used by amateur sailors, while Cunliffe’s style and authority had given the book iconic status.

Nevertheless, if the publishers had engaged in any long-term research programme to discover their perfect new author, they could not have done better than Rachael Sprot. She even has a grandfather who was writing Channel pilot books half a century ago.

Author and seafarer, Edward Delmar-Morgan, wrote Normandy Harbours and Pilotage: Calais to Cherbourg for Adlard Coles in 1973 and North Sea Harbours and Pilotage: Calais to Den Helder three years later.

The busy crew of Challenge 72 yacht Catzero from Humberside as they compete in the Isle of Wight Round The Island Yacht Race on the South Coast

But first she needed to discover her destined element – and learn to sail. Rachael was born in deepest Suffolk. Her father, Edward, was a landscape gardener. In 1998, when Rachael was 11 and her sister Arabella was nine, their parents took a life-changing decision.

They moved to Hampshire and bought a boat. Rachael’s mother, Miranda Delmar-Morgan, had been suffering from depression. The cause seemed inexplicable until a wise psychoanalyst pointed to the obvious truth – Miranda was a sailor who wasn’t sailing. Her return to the water transformed her family’s life.

A childhood immersed in sailing

Their yacht, Polar Bear, had been designed by Holman & Pye and built by McGruers of Clynder. Rachael describes her as ‘a great training boat’. She had no furling systems but eight winches. There were constant headsail changes and much manual anchor handling.

Rachael gives her crew a radar masterclass aboard the Challenger 72

Training her novice crew must have been exhausting for Miranda but she was greatly helped by Edward’s enthusiasm for discovering new places. Rachael describes him as someone who always wanted to get off the beaten track – the perfect parent for a pilot book writer!

Rachael discovered the thrill of arriving at new places by sea; it’s never left her. When researching the Shell Channel Pilot she visited all 99 harbours, usually with her husband Chris, but also with her parents. These were Edward’s last voyages.

Rachael began to love learning when she attended the Peter Symonds Sixth Form College in Winchester. She read English at Cambridge but also felt passionate about geography – an enthusiasm that shines through her explanations of the Channel geology.

She took a gap year to work her way across the Atlantic, struggling (not always successfully) to find jobs as a deckhand rather than a stewardess. She also discovered that Cambridge, perhaps uniquely, was a university with its own offshore cruising yacht.

Rachael steering Polar Bear with spinnaker

Though her career as a sailor may appear predestined, this was not immediately obvious to Rachael. She thought she was only taking on summer work with UKSA to de-stress from her finals.

She was soon employed full-time for Yachtmaster candidates. It was fun, she remembers, to be given a boat, a crew and a full set of charts and the freedom to sail wherever she chose – as long as the students returned with the requisite number of miles logged and skills achieved.

Then she became skipper of a Challenge 67 yacht taking offshore students to Madeira or the Azores for mile-builder and celestial navigation classes.

She herself gained a MCA Master 200 ticket, the next level up from RYA Yachtmaster Offshore or Ocean, which enabled her to spend a couple of years working on wind farm boats in the Baltic and the North Sea.

Rachael with her mother Miranda Delmar-Morgan at the launch of the Shell Channel Pilot

Sailing the world

Rachael loved the dynamic of larger yachts with big crews. She co-founded Rubicon 3 Adventure, a company that offered extended explorations on a fleet of Clipper 60s. People could join to develop their skills while also sailing to Svalbard or East Greenland, Cuba or Morocco.

Arabella often joined as mate. In 2020 the sisters were on course for the Marquesas when the world went into lockdown. By 2021 Rachael was ready for a new start. She had achieved 100,000 miles of experience and a bucket list of destinations.

She was content to return to home waters where she met her future husband, worked with the Cat Zero project in Grimsby and began discussing the Shell Channel Pilot with Lucy Wilson at Imray.

The book was published in May 2026, and in April Rachael and Chris had their first child, Muriel, an explorer of the future.

What Miranda says about Rachael as a sailor: ‘I would say that she is calm and quiet, particularly in difficult situations. She never shouts and her crew are never left in any doubt that she knows what she is doing. Her instructions are clear and each crew member knows what their individual roles are. The upshot of that is that her crew feel safe with her. She is generous in sharing her knowledge.’

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