The Crinan Canal not quite for me

In 1971 I visited Mr Hain, the manager of the Royal Bank, and asked him for a loan to buy myself a boat. To my shock he instantly agreed and soon after I found myself the owner of the Loch Long Class yacht no 98, Gaudeamus. Once I’d repaid the money Mr Hain told me that had I been looking for, say, a fridge he would have been much more dubious about the idea. He hadn’t understood how important it was for me to get afloat and that for some having a boat is one of life’s necessities.

I bought Gaudeamus from Edinburgh University, one of four boats that they were forced to sell after lobbying by Gordon Brown and others, the Students Association seeing anything called “yacht” as a symbol of privilege.

Although less than ten years old the University’s boats (the others were, of course Igitur, Iuvenes and Dum) were all suffering from the constant hard use and lack of proper maintenance typical of club yachts, especially those made available to students. She had a lot of broken frames and her sails were exhausted. All this made her affordable, with Mr Hain’s help.

Loch Longs are of course technically yachts, but they lack many of the features that one might expect to find, such as a cabin. Doing serious coastal cruising in one is quite a basic undertaking, but that is exactly what I wanted to do.

In late September I set off from Cove with a friend we’ll call Big Jim with the intention of cruising the West coast. We made good progress down the Firth of Clyde and through the Kyles with the intention of making Tarbert our first port of call. But exhaustion and darkness took over and we eventually anchored in Skate Hole, somehow getting in without hitting “the rock which covers at H.W.” according to the CCC Sailing Directions, see image below.

 

After a rather uncomfortable night we woke to find ourselves in more or less the same spot, in retrospect surprising, given the lack of chain in our anchoring arrangements. We got underway and had a fast run down to Inverneill, where the parents of a university chum gave us breakfast and encouragement, then on to anchor in the shallows off Ardrishaig.

At this point a small element of realism entered our world. We had allowed ourselves just a week for our first trip and had already spent longer than expected just getting to the canal and plainly the traverse would take longer than what was left of day two. The plan to explore a few islands began to look a little unrealistic. It seemed a good idea to do some serious investigations into what might lie ahead and these started off in the hotel, where we soon found such good company that we ended up staying the night.

The following day we walked the canal and spent a pleasant afternoon in the public bar at the Crinan Hotel, which was in those days a friendly place. We ended up quite unable to walk the nine miles back and got a lift back from a nice old fellow in a Land Rover, who turned out to be the Bishop of Argyll. We found Gaudeamus a few hundred yards nearer to Lochgilphead, pitching about in a South-westerly half gale, nasty muddy waves breaking over her bows. So we booked ourselves in for a second night, abandoned plans for the cruise and began to realise that the main focus would be on getting back home.

We left after breakfast on day four, beating into short steep waves thrown up by the strong wind against tide. The little ship coped well, less so the rigid pram dinghy, which constantly filled so that we had to stop and bail it out every half hour or so.

Off Tarbert we passed a tiny plastic cruiser with three aboard, struggling a bit but seeming cheerful, the only other craft we saw all day.

Each long tack across Loch Fyne got us half a mile or so closer to Ardlamont Point, which we rounded as it was beginning to get dark. It had taken many hours of constant hard work to get there. The wind had steadily freshened during the day, but now we had a lee in the West Kyle and flew down on a reach to Tighnabruaich, where we found a mooring. The hotel was full but we persuaded them to find us some space to doss in our sleeping bags. The talk in the bar was about that little plastic cruiser, which had been lost an hour or so after we had passed her, drowning her crew.

Severely chastened, weather-beaten and tired but a bit wiser, we had an uneventful day five spent reaching and running back home. I haven’t seen Gaudeamus for many years but it’s good to know that she is still around. These tough wee boats have a habit of surviving. Big Jim is still around somewhere in the South of England.