jimmy bittlestone wrote:

Hi, I've been invited to sail around Britain next summer with a mate,
however at the moment we are thinking of going anti clockwise, so as
to sail into the wind (west) for the shortest period of time. The
north coast is significantly shorter than the south and there are many
more marinas on the south coast to bolt into should the weather turn,
so we think this sounds reasonable. The rest of the UK sailing
population obviously thinks differently, which has lead me to ask you
good fellows to share this knowledge. As we see it the east and west
coasts will be much the same or am I missing something?...
Do tell...

It is essentially a matter of luck. But if you are missing anything, it
is the fact that summer weather can often contain a lot of northwesterly
and that makes a passage up the east coast a flog all the way.
But the weather seems to be changing. I don't think you can rely on the
prevailing wind being southwesterly as you once could. If I were doing
it, I'd be reading the weather charts for a week or so before leaving,
look for the trends, and not decide which way to go till I dropped the
lines. That approach would at least give me an easy first five days for
which the forecasts are generally reliable. After that, it's luck.