Sary Olden, my 11’ Mirror, wetted her bottom with both the hard and the soft variety of Scottish wet stuff this year. No, not whisky — although we were sailing not far from where the stuff was — the sea, just south of Mallaig on the road to the Isles. The ‘soft’ was the dark peaty water of Loch Morar.

This area is covered by the One Inch O.S. Sheet 34. Loch Morar is about eleven miles long east to west by about one and a half miles wide. Its western end empties into the River Morar, which after only half a mile empties in turn into the estuary. The deepest sounding line on the O.S. map is the 700’ one, but the locals insist that the greatest depth is 1000’, and that you have to go 500 miles out into the Atlantic before you get comparable soundings. The great depth doesn’t bear thinking about when your dinghy is made of 5mm ply!

The locals also claim a monster called Morag, which is bigger and better than the Loch Ness variety. When the dark clouds are halfway down the mountains and nasty little squalls swoop down on the loch, it is easy to believe a monster lurks deep in that dark water.

Mr Haydn Jenkins runs a sailing school and also hires out dinghies and canoes from a point along the single track road which runs along the north shore for about three miles. The accessible launching sites are along this road also.

Mr Jenkins was very helpful to me regarding the hazards and local knowledge. Most of the knobs of rock are close to the shore or around the islands, and the submerged dangers are marked with steel rods or improvised buoys. A group of islands lie at this end of the loch, and these islands were the main attraction for my two sons. A barbecue fire on a sandy beach with a view reminiscent of the Canadian Rockies, the dinghy at the waters’ edge tied to a tree, and not a soul or a sail in sight — this for us is the essence of dinghy cruising and adventure.

We repaired a small jetty of loose stones that someone had built to be able to step out dryshod onto the beach on Eileen Meadhoin. Two days later we returned and found the stones under water and the beach somewhat narrower. I estimated that the level of the loch had risen a good 6” after two days of only moderate rainfall. This is worth bearing in mind, for, equally, the level must fall after a dry spell of weather, thus increasing the below-water dangers.

The islands, the loch and the loch shore are privately owned, but the laws regarding trespass are very lax in some parts of the Western Highlands. This has to be so because of the lack of roads. Many places, indeed most places, are only accessible by crossing other people’s land or water. One result of this is laissez-faire camping, so that you see tents etc. on any bit of flat ground, and often no one seems to mind. Camping sites with modern facilities are few and far between, and were overcrowded during the peak weeks when we were there.

The launching site for the sea is right next to Morar Garage, and is at the head of a shallow bay on the north shore of the estuary. The whole estuary dries out at low water, and so launching and retrieving are only possible at half tide or above. The bottom is sand, with the occasional rock showing above the sand, and these are more numerous in the bay. The clearness of the water and the seaweed growing on these rocks enable you to avoid them. I only hit one a day on average!

The entrance is divided by an outcrop of rock into a narrow five yard gap on the north side and a wide 300 yard one on the south. The local small boat fishermen use the north gap, and I should imagine the reason for this is that the sand bar across the south gap is changing depth frequently, whereas the narrow north one is scoured by the tides and fairly constant. In calm conditions I touched the top of a sand ridge on the bar at about half tide, and noticed that the ridges were quite large. In any sort of a sea, this bar across the south entrance must be quite dangerous.

Opposite Morar lie the islands of Eigg and Rhum, with the long coastline and jagged Cuillins of Skye to the north about five miles away. I took the telescope up the hill above the north entrance several times, and weighed the pros and cons of making a single-handed passage across the sea to Skye. Whether it was because of unreadiness, prudence, or just plain cowardice, I don’t know — perhaps a bit of all three — but my bonnie boat only sped as far as Mallaig, about two miles north of Morar. I must not make excuses, but when that Premium Bond comes up trumps, the first thing on the list is a displacement dinghy with roller reefing and a galvanised iron centreplate.