Jennet is an Albacore, 15’ by 5’ 4”, built 1962, sail no. 1441. She is standard except for the mast, which is a Proctor without diamond bracing and jumpers, and centreplate, which is heavy galvanised steel. Cruising fittings include lockers, steering compass, no. 2 mainsail of 45 sq.ft., a tiller line and cleats. Standard sails are: foresail 35 sq.ft. and no. 1 mainsail 90 sq.ft.

On autumn days there always seems to be no wind at all, or too much. The gentle, steady breezes of summer are gone, and in their place come flat, dripping calms or yachtsman’s gales. Sailing is still fun, but conditions become more and more extreme until the frosts and gales of winter bring most of us to shore, however reluctantly, until the new season. In Scotland it is possible to sail up to the end of October without serious risk of frostbite, but not without an element of risk.

Jennet’s last sail of the year was on October 29th, on Loch Lomond. My crew was Peter, a complete novice who had sailed only once before. His initiation, a short couple of hours on Loch Linnhe in the summer, had made him enthusiastic to try again, so this time we planned to make as long a day of it as the light would allow.

It was a dour, unfriendly morning. Between showers, with the wind gusting from the northwest, we rigged and launched from a private slip at the southern end of the loch, and on small mainsail (an old one cut down to half-size) and foresail set out, close- hauled, between the islands of Creinch and Inchcailloch, keeping a wary eye on the black catspaws scurrying across the surface under the gusts. We tacked to leave Inchfad to starboard, passing close to the Little Ireland perch, which marks a reef of submerged boulders on the port side.

Once away from the shore, things looked good; in spite of the flat light the islands showed their autumn tints, the rain held off, and Jennet swung along under a wind gusty enough to be interesting but not enough to be exasperating. We had started the day early, and soon thoughts of lunch began to obtrude on our enjoyment of the sail. We put in at a nicely sheltered spot on the south-east end of the islet of Bucinch, in a little bay surrounded by trees right to the water’s edge. The trees provided a perfect lee into which we luffed with just enough way for the stem to kiss the shingle for Peter to jump out and bed the anchor while I lowered the sails and dragged out the lunch basket.

In perfect shelter, with a perfect outlook and with fallen logs conveniently arranged to provide seats and a table, we ate slowly. Soup, Scotch eggs and fruit cake followed by coffee well diluted with Scotland’s most celebrated central heating beverage.

After lunch I shipped the Seagull with the idea of giving it a final flush with fresh water before laying up, and at the same time pushing on further to windward clear of the islands. The Seagull is mounted on a special bracket clamped to the mainsheet horse on the transom, and since the boom is too long to fit comfortably in the cockpit, I hoist it out of the way by unshackling the main halyard from the headboard and transferring it to the boom end to act as a topping lift. The mainsheet is hauled in to stop it swinging about.

With the foresail furled and lashed on the foredeck and the mainsail rolled down on the boom, we pushed off. The Seagull started first pull, and we ran out of the lee of the islet, leaving it to starboard, and headed NNW into the teeth of the wind. It was a hard slog: on full throttle we made slow progress against the windage of the bare mast, and it was difficult to keep Jennet’s head up to the wind. Once she started to pay off she would not come back; I had to let her run off across the wind to get speed up and then force her up against it again. For inland waters the waves were astonishingly big, too; she pitched violently and the screw revved alarmingly as it broke the surface from time to time. I do not much like using the outboard at the best of times; it is totally different from sailing, when you use the elemental power and go with it — you have to, even if you are beating to windward. This was quite different; we were fighting the elements head on, making way by sheer machine power and smashing the waves and the wind to do it. I considered unshipping the motor and hoisting sail, but we had not enough sea room. Bucinch and Inchcruin were dead to leeward, and I knew that once I stopped the Seagull she would be off under the bare pole like lightning. The lee of Inchlonaig was close ahead, so, gritting our teeth, we slammed and banged yard by painful yard until suddenly we shot forward into calm water. Thankfully I unshipped the outboard and laid it alongside the centreboard case with the lanyard round the mast.

Under sail again, we cruised along the southwest shore of Inchlonaig, enjoying the beautiful shoreline and the many birds, while the roar of the outboard emptied from our heads. Peter confessed to having felt sick, but said he was quite better and enjoying himself again.

Approaching the north east corner of the island, we saw that the open water beyond was a mass of foam and white horses. The wind had veered west and was blowing really hard. We debated whether to push on or turn tail, and prudence won the day. Even on the small mainsail I thought the run might be a little too exciting with a novice crew, so we set to work to drop it while we were still in the lee. What happened next was so sudden that I do not know why, or how, it came about. The mainsail was down, the battens out and I was flaking it when suddenly I was aware that we were heeling gunwale under, and that Peter was still holding on to the foresail sheet. As I jumped for the weather gunwale I shouted “For Chrissake, let go!” and at that moment the side deck went under and she filled, slowly rolling over. I flung myself over the weather gunwale and struggled to get a foot onto the centreplate, but was too far aft and could not reach. Peter was hanging onto the weather gunwale too, but from inboard. He looked stunned. I reached the centreplate and stood on it. It seemed to take an age as I inched more and more weight outward before she started to come up. Up to now I had remained dry, but when she did come up I was too slow scrambling aboard and went in up to the waist. I knew that if I put my weight on the gunwale she would roll right over to windward, so I had to drop back in, work my way round to the stern and climb in over the transom. So there we were, swamped but upright again, with a tangled mass of sail and gear floating about the cockpit and the foresail flogging. I grabbed the bailer and told Peter to get the bucket out from under the foredeck, but he could not find it. I moved forward to look myself — and over we went again. Getting her up was a repeat performance, but this time I remained aft, bailing like mad with one hand and with the other on the tiller, letting Peter do the searching. As he groped under the foredeck she went down suddenly and deeply by the head and he had to retreat, whereupon she lay with the foredeck awash.

We sat on the after deck. There was no chance of bailing her dry: it is difficult enough to beat the inflow through the centreboard casing without every wave slopping in over the fore and side decks. I thought of inflating the rollaboats and pushing them under the foredeck to give us a little more buoyancy, but either they had washed overboard or got themselves jammed somewhere inaccessible, or were never on board (the last proved to be the case, later). Without that bucket we would be literally sunk, and even with it we would have little hope of gaining on the water. She seemed to be settling lower all the time and every wave swept over the fore and side decks.

Peter’s life jacket was inflated. In a spirit of genuine curiosity I pressed the emergency lever on mine, which is a gas inflated one. There was a comforting hiss, the press studs popped and it inflated to about half full. Trying not to sound too concerned, I asked Peter whether, if he had to, he could swim to the shore about half a mile away to leeward and was relieved when he said “Yes”.

He also said he could not believe this was happening to him, and I knew what he meant — I, too, felt an extraordinary sense of detachment. I explained the necessity of staying with the boat unless she went down, and that I was going to try to beach her.

By taking in the lee sheet I got the foresail to fill, and the mad flogging stopped, but as soon as it drew it forced the bow down and Jennet ‘sounded’ like a wounded whale, trying to stand on her nose while we perched on the angle of transom and after deck like cats on a roof ridge. Slowly she came up again and I played the sheet to get the sail to draw just enough to give some forward motion without repeating the performance. Once or twice I overdid it, and once I observed that the entire foresail was submerged, with only the mast above the shrouds showing above the surface.

Peter said he could not understand why no one saw us and came to our rescue. I could understand it: we were in a quiet bit of the loch, well offshore, the light was not too good and anyone looking our way from the shore would have the wind in his eyes. I remembered the red flare in the starboard locker but determined to use it only if we could not get to shore before dark, when it would be most effective.

As we got closer to the shore we could see that the beach was of fine gravel, rather steep-to and with the sea chopping in on it. There was not much surf, but the waves were breaking with real power. Peter said afterwards that it took over an hour to cover that half mile — I was busy and it did not seem so long. When I judged we were about to strike I freed the foresail sheet, hauled up the centreplate and rudder, and let her broach. The moment she touched we jumped for it and tried to drag her bow up the beach. It was incredibly hard: the waves pounded terribly, and we could not stop her from grinding and pounding on the gravel. I plunged in, pulled out the bungs in the transom and heaved from the stern for all I was worth, while Peter heaved at the bow. No good. With all that water in we could never drag her up enough to prevent her broaching and being pounded to bits. In desperation I concentrated on lifting the stern to assist the outflow from the transom bungs, while Peter flailed water out with the bucket which had now obligingly floated out of its hidey-hole. In a few minutes I knew we were winning; waves were still thumping my back but solid water was no longer washing into the cockpit, only spray. Then I could shift her just a little up the beach. A bit more and — oh joy! — she stayed stern-to-sea and I could get out of that cold water again.

Peter dropped the bucket and retired up the beach to be sick. We emptied our seaboots, wrung as much water as possible out of our clothes, and started to recover the scattered gear and stack it on the beach. It is amazing what a mess everything was in. The fore buoyancy bag was quite flat — or rather not flat, more like a large ball of tightly crumpled paper.

After we had dropped that flogging foresail we gathered up the mainsail and boom which had washed overboard. The wind snatched the sail and in an instant it was flying like a huge kite, streaming out on twenty feet of halyard from the masthead, boom and all. The boom is aluminium, but I did not fancy stopping it with my head if it came down end on, but fortunately it came down on the beach and we grabbed it and put the sail to sleep before it did any damage.

After that it was just a matter of dogged persistence until we were shipshape and ready to launch again. It was pretty cold and getting dark, so we wasted no time. Once having made sufficient offing, it was a pleasant broad reach back to our starting point under foresail and very well-reefed small mainsail.

Later I enquired of the Glasgow weather centre what their met. records said of the day. The mean wind speed was 18 knots, with gusts of over ten minutes duration of up to 39 knots. Between 1300 and 1400, before our capsize, two gusts of 24 knots were recorded. I believe them.

Peter has now bought his own boat!