One of the longer sea lochs

I apologise for yet another article about the west coast of Scotland, but when the weather is right it is the most beautiful sailing area for small boats. You have to face the fact that the weather can be inclement for long periods, and when you are working on a week or ten days holiday the whole time can be lost in the rain and mist. My boat is a 17 foot twin bilge keel Express Pirate sloop. I treat it very much as a dinghy and have a cockpit tent under which we cook having all the cooking equipment in boxes which stow under the cockpit seats. This keeps the cabin clean and helps to reduce the mould growth. Over the ten years I have had the boat it has never been used as much as I had hoped it would but 1994 was a record year for me with a trip to the head of Loch Etive and a circumnavigation of Mull in the one year all in glorious sunshine.

In a small boat with or without cabin it is not comfortable to sit out long periods of bad weather. Over the last six years I have slowly sorted out the major problems. I now have a white cockpit tent cut so that it does not cover the cabin windows. There are also windows in the tent so that you can see out from the cockpit. This has made sitting at anchor much more pleasant. The rigging has been upgraded from 3 mm wire to 4 mm wire. A third reef has been added to the mainsail. These last two measures have enabled us to sail in the strong easterly winds you often get when a depression is passing to the south and it is dry because the rain has fallen on the east side of the country. My boat is slightly under-ballasted for the west coast. With a crew of three we can keep driving up to the top end of force five but with two or single-handed the boat is over powered in anything of a wind.

The approach to Loch Etive from the sea usually starts with your arrival in Loch Dunstaffnage. This loch is formed behind the headland with Dunstaffnage Castle on it. This castle stands twenty feet in the air on the core of an old volcano and was built by the MacDougalls. It is well worth a visit and a joint ticket for the castle and Bonawe Furnaces can be bought here for a reduced price. There is also a MacDougall chapel hidden in the woods. We usually land on the foreshore and use the facilities of the castle. The east side of the loch is filled by the Dunstaffnage Marina which has the distinction of being one of the most expensive in the UK. We usually pick up a mooring and have found the other mooring owners have been most friendly.

From here it is a short sail to the Falls of Lora. These are the crux of getting into the loch. These are caused by the narrow entrance to the loch which acts as a diode impeding the flow of water into and out of the loch. At low tide there is a drop out of the loch of up to a metre and at high tide there is a drop into the loch of a metre. This causes dangerous rapids to form over the reefs in the narrows. Canoeists enjoy the falls and in early 1994 one was lost, so they are dangerous. However at around half tide the levels inside and out balance and you can pass through with no problems. In fact in Victorian times coasting schooners without motors would pass through taking ore to the Bonawe Furnaces and bringing pig iron out.

The time of slack water is difficult to predict because it depends on the relative heights of the loch and the sea. The barometric pressure affects both of these but the loch is also affected by the amount of rain water draining into it. The tidal range in the loch is noticeably reduced compared to the open sea due to the falls and at neaps appears to be only about a metre. Our approach is to arrive at the falls about two and a half hours after low water. You can then anchor or pick up a mooring on the north side in front of the hotel and watch the falls to choose the first moment to get through. We have sailed into the five knot current and remained stationary for half an hour until the current eased much to the amusement of some bystanders although one decided to ring the coastguards who then scrambled the helicopter which arrived just as we were having tea. The helicopter took one look and pushed off.

Last year (1994) my daughter Rachel and I had arrived at Creran Moorings on Saturday afternoon 21st May. We launched and were able to rest sipping whisky by the time a dramatic sunset was taking place. On Sunday we sailed round to Loch Dunstaffnage and picked up a mooring. On Monday morning we visited the castle and used the facilities and set off for the falls by 1100. An hour later we were sitting in the sunshine having picked up a mooring in front of the hotel and were watching a swan enjoying the falls. It would fly above the rapids and then land so that it came bouncing down the slide. Within half an hour the rocks had disappeared and the levels inside and out were equalised. We set off as soon as this occurred because we had to get across the tide to the south side before we were swept onto the rocks by the incoming tide. The first reach of the loch is like a large river with grandiose houses on the south bank. After a mile the reach finishes in some more whirlpools. We were quickly through these with a following wind and into the first large basin of the loch which runs E/W.

This basin opens up to about a mile wide. It is very much like Ullswater on a grander scale and also less populated. On the south side are the Abbott’s Islands which are small islands with a cove you can anchor in out of the waves but exposed to the wind as the islands are low. On the north side there are some boats moored inside a barrier of reefs which must be reasonably sheltered and also have access to the road which runs along the north side. About two miles up the reach is Ardchattan Priory. We arrived here about tea time and picked up a mooring behind the fish farm. We landed on the fish farm jetty just at the moment a party of school children were arriving for an educational visit. I am not sure if we formed part of the education as we struggled to get out of our sailing clothes. It was still cold despite the sun and there was snow on the top of the higher hills.

Ardchattan Priory was built by the MacDougalls of Dunstaffnage in the 1250s presumably in the hope of avoiding eternal damnation. The churchyard contains the graves of many Lords of the Isles. The present owners have created a garden centre taking advantage of the mild west coast weather. We bought tea at the tea rooms they run and were amused by the collection of crockery they used. Nothing matched but nothing was chipped.

Opposite the priory the south shore is deeply indented by large bays with castellated houses poking above the trees. In one bay there is a collection of what look like ‘live aboards’ in MFV’s. We have never anchored in these bays but they would provide good shelter. After the priory there is a wriggle before Airds Bay with the Bonawe Furnace in the SE corner and the quarries on the NE side. The Admiralty chart shows an anchorage in a rocky pool in front of the quarry and we had intended to stay there for the night. When we approached it the quarry was spewing out a steady stream of pollution so we decide to carry on into the upper loch.

The loch takes a sharp swing to the north to run NE/SW. Our chart ran out at the quarries and we were now relying on the ever popular navigation document the AA Road Book supplemented by the 1976 edition of the Clyde Cruising Club Sailing Directions. The Sailing Directions mentioned many bays but they were difficult to identify without names in the Road Book. This upper section of the loch is about nine miles long and there is no road on either side. Originally the farms were supplied from the water and there are some large stone quays remaining. I think there must be the odd Land Rover track now. The main navigational hazard in the upper loch is the Inverliver reef, parts of which are just below the surface at high tide. This is not marked and stretches half a mile from the east side of the loch.

We were running before the wind still but as the sun set behind the hills the wind dropped when we were half way up the reach. We were hoping to find a nice bay to anchor in but there was nothing. Each apparent headland turned out to provide no shelter. Dinghy cruisers could have drawn up on one of the many beaches although some of the bays were blocked by lines of barrels connected with the shell fisheries. At last as dusk was approaching the ruined jetty at the head of the loch appeared. Following the CCC Sailing Directions we tried to find the approved anchorage but we could not fit the features we could see to those described. In the end we anchored in two metres just to the north of the jetty recognising we would have to get out in a hurry if the wind set in from the south. There is a road down Glen Etive to this north end and there are holiday cottages. Staying at this end I think you would be a bit trapped with a long beat out in the usual southerly winds. We had a very quiet night with little variation in the sea level. When I awoke on Tuesday at 0600 the wind was from the north so we set off immediately. After about an hour the wind went very light and drew ahead. At last we got into the sunshine in a wider part of the loch and warmed up a bit. The wind set in from the east. We then roared down to the Bonawe Narrows and round to Murphy's Jetty where we anchored.

After breakfast we landed on Murphy's Jetty with some difficulty as it is a bit run down. It was built for loading and unloading the coasting schooners for the furnace in 1860s and is now preserved by a small trust who ask for donations. It is a short walk from here to the furnace which is well worth a visit. It is an extraordinary experience finding this centre of industrial activity in the middle of nowhere. From the 1750s the ore was brought up from Cumbria to be processed using charcoal available from the oak woodlands which once covered all the hills on the west coast and were destroyed to produce pig iron. The first question a New Zealand visitor asked me on seeing the bare hills was “where are all the trees?” Destroyed for industry must be the answer. Some of the woodlands were managed correctly and you can visit one just to the south of the village of Taynuilt and see the charcoal burning hearths and coppicing activity still maintained for the visitors. The other facility which was available was water power. Loch Awe drains into Loch Etive here and was used to power the bellows of the furnace. The power from Loch Awe is now used to produce electricity and you can visit the underground turbines near the Pass of Brander.

Taynuilt also had a small brewery in the railway station which we visited for a drink but found a slightly inhospitable atmosphere and no attempt to make us feel welcome. I am not sure if it is still there. There are many places to stay in Taynuilt and a rather open camp site east of the village on the main road. It would be a good place to stay to explore the loch both to the sea and to the head of the loch.

After filling up with water at the furnace but not disposing of our rubbish we returned to the jetty which was just about to dry out to mud. We just got off without getting our feet muddy. A lady in one of the cottages had offered us water but we did not have the nerve to ask her to take our rubbish. In the afternoon sun we blew down to the west end of the loch and anchored to wait for the tide. Whilst we waited we had a big cook up. My forty year old Primus was driving us mad not holding its pressure for more than a minute. The problem was eventually tracked down to the bleed screw of the filler cap. As it was a trapped screw I could not then do anything about it but later I was able to buy a new filler cap from City Hardware which has transformed the Primus.

When the tide-rips died down we set off under motor against the westerly wind which had just started blowing. After the bridge we made sail and beat down to the moorings in Loch Dunstaffnage. In encouraging Rachel to get used to handling the boat, we had an epic, picking up the mooring. I had not noticed there was a back eddy setting quite strongly through the moorings with a fluky wind. We approached the mooring against wind and current stalled the boat two feet short of the buoy and drifted fast back onto the boat moored astern getting the dinghy one side of the buoy and us the other. Luckily it all happened in slow motion and after getting the sails down we were able to extract ourselves. We then approached the buoy at maximum speed and it nearly pulled my arms off trying to hold on. Our one witness turned out to be a very pleasant lady on board by herself who approved of Rachel’s attempts to master the intricacies of manoeuvring under sail.

Wednesday dawned fair so we sailed across to the sound of Mull and on to Tobermory where we met up with Edwin. He lent us a chart for Loch Sunart so we spent Thursday night in Loch Drumbuie. On Friday we beat back down to the Sound and on to Port Ramsay on Lismore. Saturday we explored Lismore and had tea at the Old School House which was well worth the walk. Saturday we returned to Creran to leave the boat ashore for a flying trip to Dorset on family business and then back to work for Rachel.

References and Useful Addresses

Jock and Jonquil Slorrance — Creran Moorings, Barcaldine, Oban Argyll PA37 1SG. I negotiated to have half a season of their slip and store arrangement for trailer sailers so that we had two months with the boat stored there.

Clyde Cruising Club Sailing Directions — Kintyre to Ardnamurchan. I have not bought the latest edition but I imagine it must cover the same areas as the 1974 edition.

Admiralty charts: 2378 covers to Bonawe Narrows. 5076 covers Lochs Creran and Etive but is uncorrected. I have not seen this chart.

Yachtsman’s Pilot to the West Coast of Scotland — Crinan to Cana by Martin Lawrence. This does not cover the area very well.

City Hardware — 6/8 Goswell Street, London EC1M 7AA. For Primus/Optimus spares. They operate a very efficient service. I rang up one day and the correct part was with me the next day. Telephone 071 253 4095.

Launching Sites:

Taynuilt over the beach beside the pier. The old ferry slip gets used by pleasure cruises now but could be used.

Opposite to Connel there is a slip beside the hotel just west of the bridge.

Dunstaffnage Marina. £10 in and out on their slip plus car parking £2 a day.