Peter Bruce was born at Hove, Sussex on 26 September 1941. At Sheborne School he was a useful wing forward in the rugby team, an excellent marksman in the rifle shooting team and, as the school’s top middle distance runner, was never beaten in athletics and cross country inter-school matches.
He went to Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1959 where his running career soon turned into a yacht-racing career, and he skippered the 43ft Dartmouth yachts with considerable success. After Dartmouth, with eyesight less than perfect, he chose the marine engineering branch and whilst at the Royal Naval Engineering College he skied for the Royal Navy Team, and once for England, when he came sixth overall in the Commonwealth Ski Championships at St Moritz. Thereafter he served in HMS Victorious, Blake, Danae and Norfolk. In spite of the liklihood of further promotion, but hampered by seemingly unexplainable health problems, he applied for voluntary redundancy as a commander, and took to writing nautical books. Of his local books: Solent Hazards, Wight Hazards, and Inshore Along the Dorset Coast besides the tidal stream manuals Solent & Island Tidal Streams and Tidal Streams between Portland Bill and St Alban’s Head, 62,000 have sold. Of wider interest is the world famous book that he took over from the original author, Adlard Coles, called Heavy Weather Sailing, now in its sixth edition, the most recent three editions having been edited by Peter Bruce. The last edition was translated into eight foreign languages.
Peter Bruce has represented Britain in yachting events on seven occasions, four times in the British Admirals Cup Team, twice in the British teams for the Southern Cross series in Australia, and once as the sighted skipper of one of the British Team blind sailing crews. In ’79 he was in the top individual boat in the Admiral’s Cup, twice, in ’77 and ’81 he was in the winning Admiral’s Cup team and, when skippering a blind crew in the ’92 World Blind Sailing Championships in New Zealand, he won a gold medal. Steering his own yacht he has won his class in Cowes Week on seven occasions, and again at the helm of his own boat in ’78 he won the Round the Island Race Gold Roman Bowl. As well as winning his class many times in Cowes Week he has won his class, again at the helm of his own boat Owl, in the Scottish Series and at Cork Week. At the helm of someone else’s boat he won the famous double the, Britannia Cup and the New York Yacht Club trophy in the same Cowes Week. Skippering his own boat he has twice won RORC races overall, and national titles that he has won are rather too numerous to mention. He has twice been runner up in the Royal Lymington Cup International Match racing series.
Peter Bruce has done much cruising in between his racing feats, for example sailing from Malta to Syracuse and back in 1955, taking his uncle's Elizabethan 29 from Lymington to Malta in 1967. In recent years, helped by his wife Sandy and friends, he has taken his yacht Maxi 1100 Owl cruising to France, Scotland and Ireland on numerous occasions, as well as to The Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain. He has cruised the northern Baltic from Stockholm to Helsinki, and from Halifax to Newfoundland and back.
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