There was uproar in the British press, which objected to foreign organisations meddling in Britain’s national institutions. It turned out that the Spanish Met Office used Finisterre in its shipping forecast for a different, much smaller area, and no less an authority than the United Nations World Meteorological Organisation had decided that this would cause confusion. But in 2002 the Met Office caused a furore when it renamed the Finisterre area after its founder, Robert FitzRoy.
Until 2002, all the Shipping Forecast areas were named after geographical features, be they sandbanks (Forties, Viking, Dogger, Fisher, Sole and Bailey), rivers and estuaries (Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Humber, Thames and Shannon), towns (Dover and Portland), islands (North and South Utsire, Wight, Lundy, Fastnet, Rockall, Hebrides, Fair Isle, Faeroes and Southeast Iceland), seas (German Bight – formerly Heligoland – Biscay and Irish Sea), or headlands (Finisterre, Trafalgar and Malin). The forecast is like an umbilical cord, drawing us home. Finally, after three days, I hear what I’ve been waiting for: “Biscay, Finisterre: Southwest 2 or 3, fair, good.” A massive high has come across the Atlantic and parked itself right over the Western Approaches, giving us calm seas and a gentle breeze. So every day I listen to the Shipping Forecast, at least twice, sometimes four times, waiting for the break to come.
Stories abound of yachts getting into trouble here. For three days, the nearest coast will be at least half a day’s sail away. It’s a critical moment in our 1,000-mile (1,600km) journey as, once we leave Camariñas, we will abandon the shelter of land and be at the mercy of the Bay of Biscay. We take shelter in a small harbour just north of Cape Finisterre. Good.” That’s too much weather for this old girl. Preparing to head north into Finisterre (now FitzRoy), we hear a disembodied voice on the radio say: “Finisterre: Northwesterly 6 or 7, occasionally gale 8 later. Chastened, we listen to the Shipping Forecast with renewed zeal. Before setting off, some friends and I spent a week patching the boat up, but despite our best efforts we weren’t able to cure a persistent leak in the garboards and, after bashing through a gale in the Trafalgar sea area, the mast has developed an ominous crack. I am stormbound on an old wooden sloop that I bought in southern Portugal and am sailing back to the UK.
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