Volume 2
Grateful To Have Had My Sight Then, and My Vision Now, To Remember
It was my intention to keep, when ever possible, my reflections on my working life, as rudimentary as they were described, and separate, as far as possible, from my reflections on my personal life. This will not be as easy as I first thought. Obviously this becomes more difficult as I progress and the two elements become further interdependent in my life
Think of your oldest friends, or your closest friends, or those who have had a great influence on you. Do you ever try to recall how you first met and the circumstances surrounding that? Some come thundering into your life while others make a more subtle entrance.
The friends I made through sailing were from both categories and I have good reason to be eternally grateful, not just for the great pleasure that sailing, both racing and cruising, gave me, but for the very many good friends I made through it. I am thankful to sailing for my longest and closest companions; seven of us, three married couples and our bachelor friend. This close-knit bond was a direct result of the Tech Sailing Club and while we sailed the West Coast of Scotland for many years as well as the Mediterranean Seas our friendship has long since been bound together into an association much greater than that.
Death has reduced our numbers to two couples - Douglas and Pat, and Joyce and me. The group, now in its reduced form still continues to dine together every month, almost without a break, throughout the last fifty years. “So what?” you may say. Well, for me the uniqueness lies in the fact that each gathering is as fresh, stimulating and interesting as though it was the first. If you like, now, it has become something like a fulcrum for opinions and comments sharpened by experience, not blunted by age.
But I am jumping the gun. Let me tell you about the Tech Sailing Club and all that evolved from that first evening. What was it all about?
The Club, initiated some two years earlier, had four club boats, a 27ft whaler with a jib foresail, gaff rigged mainsail and mizzen sail, a 14ft Royal Navy Sailing Association dinghy with a fore jib and a Gunter-rigged mainsail, both inherited from the School of Navigation, two 12ft Firefly racing dinghies (a gift from the American Olympic team after the London 1948 Olympics, which were immediately christened Nut and Bolt). The club also had the permanent use of a small 19ft cruising yacht, Zingara.
That was it, our “Grand Fleet.” At that time we had no members actually owning a boat - that came later. The Royal Technical College Sailing Club, as we knew it in the year 1955, sailed out of Shandon on the Gareloch, with a predominantly inexperienced but enthusiastic membership with aims and ambitions well beyond our entitlement. We were fortunate in having George, an excellent Commodore, and one or two founder members; all first-rate yachtsmen in their own right and ready and willing to impart their skills to fledgling members.
I became totally absorbed in the sport to the exclusion of all other sporting activities; so much so that my early flirtation with golf went by the board. Within a short time I became honorary club secretary and put the club forward for membership of the Royal Yachting Association and the prestigious Clyde Yacht Club Conference.
We were considered, if considered at all, as “impudent upstarts” by some of the well established sailing clubs such as the Largs and Helensburgh Clubs who could each easily muster well over three hundred privately owned vessels. The powerful "Royal" clubs tolerated as and welcomed our application on the basis that we would bring youthful vitality to the sport and should be encouraged.
The big joke was that we were registered as a ‘Royal Sailing’ club and when I turned up to represent the club at the very formal conferences, such as the location for the next international racing regatta, the order of precedence on voting for decisions was the very prestigious: Royal Clyde Yacht Club, Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, Royal Gourock Yacht Club, Royal Northern Yacht Club, Royal Technical College Sailing Club, Royal Western Yacht Club, and then the others followed, Helensburgh etc, etc in alphabetical order, much to their annoyance
We, however, were under no illusions that we were ever a Royal yacht club. It was a ridiculous situation but we played on the role for all it was worth. I even managed to arrange reciprocal privileges to use clubhouse facilities of the other Royal clubs such as the Royal Thames in London, Royal Sydney in Australia the Royal Hong Kong and the like. I learned later that one or two of our members took advantage of the arrangement to visit some of their clubhouses on the odd occasion they were in the area. We could offer nothing back by way of reciprocity.
Our clubhouse, on the other hand, was far from what could be classed as royal. It was a temporary lease of the disused stables of the Shandon Hydro! But, what the hell, with a growing and mixed membership, we were becoming established within the overall governing body of the Royal Technical College Athletic Club and we played that for all it was worth.
I took to the sport wholeheartedly and quickly discovered an aptitude for Round the Buoy racing. For two seasons I represented the College in the United Kingdom University Challenge Regatta; a week-long series of races with crews from the UK Universities taking part with international one-design Dragon racing yachts. The Duke of Edinburgh's Bluebottle was one such yacht.
This very competitive regatta was held under the auspices of the Mudhook Yacht Club, and members very generously lent out their beautiful racing yachts, (with an appointed caretaker), for a week of intensive sailing. (Many years later I was lucky enough to own one of those fine-looking yachts). Overall I did very well representing the College for two years and, while at that time the College did not award colours, I was pleased to be granted honorary life membership of the Royal Technical College Athletic Club for my achievements.
I should mention in passing, that later on I received the Royal warrant to fly the Blue Ensign - the White Ensign was flown by all the Royal Naval ships and, as a special courtesy, members of the prestigious Royal Yacht Squadron. Next in line came the Blue Ensign, a privilege granted to flag officers and certain members of Royal Clubs, then there was the Red Ensign flown by commercial vessels and all other yachtsmen.
It came as a bit of a surprise to some in the Royal Yacht Squadron and those privileged to fly the Blue Ensign back in 1939, when war broke out, to discover they were under the auspices of the Royal Naval Reserve and their charts, navigational equipment, sextons and binoculars, and the like, were requisitioned and, in some exceptional cases, their yachts commandeered for the war effort.
I still hold that warrant, as it is granted to the person and not the boat, but I think I should return it as at present I don't even own a rubber dinghy!
I have rushed through these events because the club's importance was its initial impact on me as an introduction to sailing and the making of great friends and, more importantly, meeting Joyce, now my wife. It can be said however, from then on, and for many years thereafter, irrespective of other commitments, I would endeavour to fit in a two-week annual sailing holiday around the West Coast of Scotland in the company of Joyce and our growing family of four. We made many great friends.
The Western Isles present an absolute paradise to yachtsmen; the scenery is quite magnificent, and the weather quite unpredictable. But to have this glory on our doorstep, well I suppose I should be eternally grateful to have had my sight then and the vision now, and thus have all the marvellous sailing experience to remember.
Even now, in my mind's eye, I am sure I could dictate the detailed sailing directions from the Firth of Clyde, through the Kyles of Bute, around into Loch Fyne, through the Crinan Canal and opening out into the Western Isles, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Islands of Mull, Skye and elsewhere and all the beautiful little anchorages in between.
One of the traditions that all cruising yachtsman religiously conformed to was attaching a bunch of heather to his bow spit when rounding Ardnamurchan Point and to his masthead when sailing beyond Skye. Sadly I think this tradition has died out.
For weekend sailing we did not have to “go out.” We had, more or less, on our doorstep, Arran, Bute, The Cumbraes, the Gareloch, Loch Long, the Holy Loch and Loch Fyne. With hundreds of anchorages it would take a yachtsmen's lifetime to exhaust.
I am getting carried away with the memories of it all. I am reciting a travelogue, instead of tales from my ships logs and at this point I must confess to finding it more and more difficult to keep my promise not to name names. It is only fair that individual characters should have their confidentiality protected - I owe it to them. But, I think I can be allowed, as slight relaxation on this matter, if it is quite clear that incidents recounted, by and large, are as seen from only my point of view.
That said, my first yachting crews on the West Coast of Scotland came about two years later. My naval architect friend, Ken, (the one who originally introduced me to the sailing club), and I chartered Robina, a 19/24 small Sloop with a 19ft waterline length, and 24ft overall. The plan was that he, along with his pretty wife, Marie, and I would sail to Rothesay, through the Kyles of Bute to Ardrishaig, through the Crinan Canal to Oban, then to Tobermory before having to return to the Clyde, within the fortnight.
Robina had a little auxiliary engine that functioned (sometimes). She would be considered now, but not then, far too small to face the rigorous conditions of the West Coast. She was a sturdy little craft and we had no reason to question her seaworthiness until the second day out.
We had left Port Bannatyne in Bute, in worsening weather and by the time we had rounded Ardlamont Point the weather had deteriorated greatly. The sky was darkening, and with very heavy rain squalls with strong northerly winds, gusting severe to gale force, mountainous seas, big waves buffeting us, we were making very little headway tacking away from the lee coast in our attempt to cross Loch Fyne.
I remember the incident clearly, I was struggling with the tiller and contemplating as to whether we should stand on or go about and run for safety. Ken, who had been down below, rummaging in the cabin for quite some time, appeared in the cockpit, calmly smoking his pipe and wearing a lifejacket. He handed one over to Marie saying, “You had better put this on, dear,” and turning to me with an apologetic smile said, “I am sorry Allan, there seems to be only two lifejackets on board.” From that moment on I was in no doubt who would be the one to be sacrificed and eaten if we ran out of food!
The situation was getting serious. We were making short tacks into the strengthening headwind; the weather worsening and we spent several long and uncomfortable hours close-hauled and beating to windward. Slowly but surely we were making headway against the ferocious wind and driving rain. Gradually the seas began to subside as we got nearer to the shore and three grateful but exhausted people eventually made the safety of the canal basin to the cheers of a small crowd lining the quay. Later we heard that the coastguard had been keeping a watching brief on our efforts for the last four or five hours and we felt a little embarrassed by it all.
I was made to feel at one and the same time, a bit of a hero but somewhat irresponsible for being out in such bad weather in such a small boat. But aren't all heroes irresponsible? In any event, we were very pleased to tuck ourselves into the canal basin for the night. We tied up alongside the Viking; a motor boat with three on board, the owner and his nephew Archie and his pal Jim. They, like us, were intending to make passage through the canal next morning.
The two were a few years older than me, very friendly and I immediately struck up a rapport with them. There was no indication then that we would become close and long-lasting friends and, for years to come, contribute so much to my life in many ways.
I was getting on well with Ken and Marie, my fellow crewmembers. They were good sailing companions, they would be about 10 years my senior. Ken had more sailing experience than me but I discovered he had limited knowledge of the West Coast. I sensed that after the tough struggle earlier in the day, an almost imperceptible change in command had taken place. I was now expected to be more proactive rather than reactive. The storm continued to rage overhead and we spent that evening snugly in Ardrishaig basin reminiscing and swapping stories with our new friends.
Ken worked for John Brown Shipbuilders, Clydebank (builders of the famous Queens' Mary, Elizabeth and Elizabeth 2nd, and many other famous ships), and had been involved in the design and building of the Royal Yacht Britannia.
He had us in stitches with tales of the constant changes to the ship's specification; supposedly to suit “Elizabeth and Philip.” His specific responsibility was for the design and layout of what he called “domestic units and facilities.” He hinted, with a straight face and laconic style, that if he had not been covered by the Official Secrets Act over that item he could tell us stories of what took place during the building of the ship that would make our hair fall out.
Ken could relate a funny story with a straight face that would do justice to the comedian Jack Benny, and his dry humour provoked a lively discussion as to how the bodily functions of the "Royals" could differ from the mere commoners.
However, he could not get us to accept that the Yacht's toilets were covered by the Official Secrets Act and as a matter of fact, I was later able to tell with first-hand experience that the toilets on board Britannia are pretty standard, no-luxury loos. Even so, I can still imagine Ken would have us believe that the "royal thrones" would have been hidden from public gaze; a super loo with a cistern designed to end with a royal flush!
Jim, one of our new found friends from the Viking, had just achieved a first class honours degree in physics from Glasgow University and was about to start a three year course leading to a Doctor of Philosophy qualification, at Cambridge. He was looking forward to the year ahead but was initially alarmed at the slightly pompous attitude of his new tutor. When at the first meeting Jim asked what branch of physics was the most commercially viable his reply was, “Young man, breathe in the atmosphere. While you are here with us you will be mixing with some of the young men and women from the greatest families and stately homes of England. You are here to learn to live not to learn to earn a living.” There was a gasp from the rest of us, which could only have been interpreted as, “What a supercilious prat.”
“I know, I know,” Jim said, “That was my initial thought too but I was glad I held back from what would have been my instinctive reply – “Sir, they, for their part, will be meeting a young man from a tenement flat in Port Glasgow who must get through his doctorate as quickly as possible and earn a living and contribute to the family resources.” Jim said he was very glad he had held his tongue because, when being shown round the Cavendish laboratory, with his tutor pointing out the great gentleman scientists with many and varied interests, names such as Newton, Darwin, Harvey, Rutherford, Crick and Watson, and more recently Hawking were mentioned. He realised his tutor was saying in effect that, “Great thoughts and achievements never come from a closed mind, take in everything while you are with us here.”
I was to hear two years later that Jim got his PhD degree in almost half the normal time and he also managed to fit in a Cambridge Blue for shooting. He became a very prominent physicist and a director of the Nobel division of the Imperial Chemical Industries. I sailed with him many times in the years ahead and he was also a very fine yachtsman.
Another chap from the Viking, Archie, had been a radio officer in the merchant Navy towards the end of the war. He was relating how he was torpedoed and adrift in the Indian Ocean for three blistering hot days and four freezing cold nights, dressed only in a singlet and shorts. A torpedo had struck the engine room killing most of the engine crew and only one lifeboat with 14 of the crew got away before the ship sank. When the order came to abandon ship he rushed to his cabin and struggled to retrieve a brooch from his heavy duty Duffel Coat - a little merchant Navy badge a girlfriend had given him - so he could attach it to his skimpy T-shirt leaving the coat to go down with the ship. It must have been a horrific and frightening experience but he told it in a manner that has us all in fits of laughter.
That opened up the discussion as to the illogical actions and unexplainable things human beings get up to in times of stress. For my part I raised the subject of instinct versus reason and brought up some classic war stories where instinct was claimed to have succeeded over reason and how they rarely stood up to scrutiny. I remember pointing out, as an example, an arguable fact that the number of people who claimed to have saved their lives by instinctively making a last-minute cancellation of their Titanic booking equalled the number of people who lost their lives by instinctively taking a last-minute passage.
I can vividly recall being particularly impressed that evening by Archie's attitude towards life. His relaxed and somewhat undisciplined philosophy was refreshingly contrary to my newly acquired order and to some extent dedicated approach.
The following year Archie and Jim purchased the thirty foot wooden Sloop, Ruby. On the face of it they were like chalk and cheese; Jim, tall, lean and highly disciplined, and Archie, medium, rotund and very undisciplined. But it was a partnership that worked and worked well and, with Jim away studying at Cambridge, I spent much time with Ruby.
It is difficult now to pinpoint the circumstances that threw Archie and me together but as the years went by I had many occasions to witness his marvellous ability to highlight the inconsequential points in life and downplay the drama. That was Archie. I was to get to know him very closely, a most lovable person and at the same time most exasperating when it came to timekeeping. I was privileged to count him as my very close friend and grateful for that friendship which went far beyond just sailing together.
He had a marvellous ability of getting on top of adversity. I suppose it was just as well because many of his difficulties were self-made. He had a single-minded approach to problems and tackled them with determination and tenacity. Unfortunately this did not always marry in with his many conflicting interests and this diversity could play havoc with other people's arrangements but his very personality was everything.
Ah yes, memories are made of evenings like that. Sadly one cannot pick and choose. Try as one can to be selective and indulge only in happy recollections it isn’t always so as life is not so kind. If it were I could fill a book with my pal Archie's adventures and indeed misadventures, blotting out the tragedy that came only too soon. It has been more than 50 years now and the dust has not settled on his memory or the last three fateful days.
The incidents keep coming back. There was the occasion when he had arranged that he and I would sail a couple of nurses he knew over to Arran for the weekend - only for me to find there were six of them waiting for us at the boat on the Friday evening! It was not that he had forgotten that he had given the same invitation to three different girlfriends during the week. Oh no, not a bit of it that was just Archie, with a smile that moves slowly from mischief to innocents he said, “Och, maybe I got carried away a wee bit.” He explained that he wanted to make sure of company but did not expect them all to turn up!
On another occasion, again due to his miscalculation, we sailed with four of his nursing friends, and once more he and I slept shivering in our sleeping bags out in the cockpit, while the girls, virtue impregnable, were warm and snug down below in the cabin. I can honestly say that in all my years of sailing in Ruby and all Archie's attempts to arrange assignations we never once managed an overnight sharing of the cabin, let alone a bunk with any of these pretty girls.
The irony was that, for a time, Ruby had earned, from our fellow yachtsman, the reputation of “the love boat.” These weekend sails never turned out as planned - leastways not as I planned. But I must admit it was all good fun once I resigned myself to another weekend of celibacy; to me Ruby was always a chaste ship.
I think of the time when arranging a 14 day cruise round the Western Isles he stored all the canned food neatly in the bilges and all the labels came off having been submerged in sea water. For three days we had nothing for breakfast but Ambrosia creamed rice and again for lunch and yet again for dinner. He did not see that as a problem. It was just another adventure adding excitement to mealtimes and he suggested that we open a book to bet as to what would come up next! He was right; it did add a frisson at mealtimes but put me off canned rice for life.
He was a very capable sailor but was always surrounded by "events." There was the weekend when I, sailing the elderly sloop, Brunette, and knowing that Archie was sailing in the Loch Fyne area, arranged to meet him at Lochgair on the Saturday as it was situated just off Loch Fyne. It was a beautiful and safe little anchorage with a fine hotel. It was all agreed. Ruby, with a tyro crew of two young doctors, was already only a short distance away in Loch Fyne. They did not arrive until the next day; the explanation relayed to me by his two slightly flustered crew members went something like this:
Two nights ago they were in Inveraray on Loch Fyne and were woken up in early morning by falling off their bunks because the boat was heeled over about forty-five degrees. In the night they had anchored Ruby on the sandbank and had woken up the next morning to find her leaning over and hard and fast on a falling tide - she was aground. Archie, seemingly quite unperturbed, shored up the bilges with two planks of wood he had onboard, ensuring that the boat would remain upright, or at least angle no further as the tide went out and, satisfied, he then went back on board, made a cooked breakfast for three. After some two hours, when the tide had left him high and dry, walked ashore to buy bread and milk from the local shop. He returned and proceeded to scrub the hull, happily singing to himself (he was noted for his fine voice) as he removed the underwater growth. That finished he came back on board and slept for a few hours until the tide came in and Ruby then smoothly sailed away to meet up with us as though it was all intended, leaving his crew with the feeling that maybe it was!
I can see him quite clearly now, his eyes sparkling, a big smile on his cherubic face and commenting on the lost day by saying, “Well Allan, that is life. If you can take the ’mis’ out of mishap you are halfway to happy and Ruby now has a clean bottom.”
His very presence enhanced any company and it did not seem to matter that many of his schemes did not come out as planned. He lived life to the full, and as it turned out right to the end. My mind is now flooded with memories of him but with a great effort I will discipline my thoughts to return to that first meeting. The next morning the weather was still bad but, refreshed and with spirits renewed, we set off in convoy with Viking to tackle the Crinan Canal. This is an experience that no yachtsmen visiting the Western Isles should miss.
I have only twice taken the alternative course of rounding the Mull of Kintyre, adding 100 miles to my passage, and once was only when a long summer drought forced the canal to close because of shortage of water - a very rare occurrence!
This waterway, opened around 1800, is some nine miles long and the vessels are raised up and down some 65 feet above sea level by means of 15 locks. It normally takes half a day to traverse but with the weather as it was we decided to spend the day in the canal and to have dinner at the Crinan Hotel with our new friends that evening.
Next morning there was a break in the weather although the forecast was for more storms and gales so we decided to leave early to catch the tide necessary to get through the Doris Mhor (the Great Door), on the way to Oban. As we headed out we could hear the angry roar of the Corryvrechan whirlpool in its bad tempered mood. We were about two hours out when the storm struck again and we decided to take refuge in the Easdale Anchorage, which was busy with several yachts opting for the same and sheltering from the storm.
Even in that sheltered anchorage several yachts were dragging their anchors and Ken suggested we should let out more chain only to be told by me, “Our anchor chain is already out to the very last link!” Calmly puffing his pipe he said, “Oh well, Allan, that is us at the bitter end.” That was the first time that expression really came home to me, like so many others it comes from the Navy. The bitter end being the last link in the chain.
We rode the storm out and the next morning and for the rest of the too brief a holiday we had magnificent weather. We met up with our new friends at Oban and again at picturesque Tobermory, (the setting for the children's TV series Balamory), before heading back to the Clyde. On the way down we visited the awe-inspiring Fingal’s Cave at Staffa, the inspiration for Mendelssohn's beautiful music, "The Hebridean Overture, and sailed under “The Bridge Over The Atlantic” near Seil Island and visited the Tigh an Truish Inn. This was where, after the 1745 Jacobite rebellion, the Highlanders going south changed from the outlawed kilt into trews. The Clachan Bridge is also known as the Bridge over the Atlantic as it links the mainland to Seil Island. It was built around 1792/3 for £450, (a large amount then), and has a high hump of 28 feet to allow small vessels, now mainly motor yachts, to sail under it. I believe at the western side of Seil Island a small ferry still carries people across the 50-yard Cuan Sound to the Isle of Luing. I remember that any craft wishing to take the inner passage had to carefully calculate the tide. This sound has very strong tides and can be difficult for small boats and the whole area is steeped in mystery and magic. I loved it all.
I have recalled this sailing holiday at some length. Why? It was certainly not the most adventurous sailing escapade or one filled with incidents that stick in my memory, nor could I know then, the start of a bond of friendship with my two great friends from the other boat. No, it was the Western Isles; the beauty coupled with a romantic sadness of seeing, at first hand, the many ruined cottages, the derelict crofts, the depopulation of the islands and the effect of the clearances, the sheer splendour, the unpredictability, to me it was love at first sight, and alas sadly, last sight.
Posted March 2009 Grateful To Have Had My Sight Then, and My Vision Now, To Remember