Largs Yacht Haven is a wonderful place, stuffed full of gleaming ocean greyhounds, eager to be off around the world. Funnily enough, it always seems to be full of the same gleaming ocean greyhounds; either they get around the world very quickly, or… The marina is not for the impecunious, the slip costs a frightening amount per launch, but immediately next door is a free, public slip. It’s not marked on the Admiralty chart, but low cunning DCA members can find these things.

One Saturday morning last summer found my Swampscott dory Madog sneaking into the water for free, at about 11.00, in time to catch the rising tide and a nice south-westerly wind for going up the Clyde. Away by 11.20, with the car and trailer parked in the public car park beside the slip, and headed north-west, towards the northern end of Great Cumbrae Island. This is no place for the slovenly: Great Cumbrae is the home of the Scottish Water Sports Centre, and slack luffs and flapping leaches are simply not allowed hereabouts.

Madog often gets admiring looks and comments, she’s very smart (from a distance) with a varnished wooden hull, ivory main and bright red jib. This time it was a bloke in a 36ft yacht also heading north. He wasn’t sufficiently impressed to swap boats though.

There’s a regular ferry service across the Largs channel from Largs town to Great Cumbrae, and dodging the ferries took a few moments attention as we got closer to the tip of Cumbrae, at Tomont End.

Course now bent a little more westerly, across the width of the Firth of Clyde to the mouth of Rothesay Sound, still with a nice south-westerly, conveniently falling a bit lighter as we started across the open water. The wind died away about a mile short of Bogany Point, at the entrance to Rothesay Sound, and out came Madog’s motor. One Collin power applied to aft oars gives about one and a half knots easy cruising speed, about two when a little more pushed and around three to four for a few hundred yards when really puffing, but it has the advantages of stealth, economy and reliability, as well as giving good mpg and healthy exercise if not overdone. Perhaps it’s a little too eccentric for some folk, as I was offered two tows by kind people in the mile and a bit before the wind came sidling back, and we ghosted along past the oil platform yard at Ardyne Point.

The NATO fuel jetty at the mouth of Loch Striven was occupied by something large, spiky and grey, as at 18.00 we entered the East Kyle. The wind was now freshening, and veering round to the north-west, which was rather unwelcome, as the East Kyle also points north-west, and is only about 800m wide; lots of beating into short, steep waves and wondering about a reef.

At 20.30, though, the anchorage under the lee of the Burnt Islands was reached. There are actually four or five islets here, at the northern extremity of the Island of Bute, with a selection of likely anchorages with a generally pebbly bottom and not too extreme a tidal variation. A quick stagger ashore to ease the muscles, and then the anchor was down, the camping cover was half up and the stove was going. Check the depth with a fishing weight on a bit of line (about 3.75m, more or less) just in case I’ve stopped on a bump.

An exquisitely beautiful evening, the wind dying away, the sun all golden on the hillside, the midges on holiday somewhere else… you’ve heard it all before.

It doesn’t get dark in Scotland in mid summer till after ten, ten thirty further north and west, and as the evening went on, a couple of other boats appeared and claimed their spots for the night. At about nine thirty a vast plastic monster came along, about forty feet or so, called, rather contrarily, Micro Electronix or something similar. Perhaps he didn’t see me, but he anchored about twenty yards away on my beam.

Now Madog is a very light boat, and with the camping cover up and the daggerboard lying in the bilges, she was swinging around her anchor in the gentle breeze over an arc of around 120° by the compass. I suggested to the bold mariner that it might be a good idea if he shifted away a little bit, as our boats were going to react very differently to wind shifts during the night, and I wouldn’t like to scratch his gel coat (as I was being driven under the surface by his dreadnought!) if we touched. Displeased? He was downright shirty and verging on the rude! Never mind, food, coffee, and something a little stronger to induce sleep as darkness fell soon calmed me down.

Of course, if it gets dark at around ten at night, it must get light at around four in the morning, and that’s when I woke up. Leisurely breakfast of bacon butties and coffee, more in the flask, listen to the weather forecast, and away by 06.45 under main alone while I threaded through the islets and rocks guarding the entrance to the West Kyle and Loch Riddon. Once in the West Kyle in clearer water there was a bit of beating in generally light west’southwest winds down past Tighnabruaich, watching the shore come to life as we glided past at around 1 knot. Past Rubha Dubh (‘Black Point’ to the heathen amongst you) and the wind came freer, but by ten o’clock had again fallen so light that the oars were out.

I rowed till about 11.00, when we were off the north end of Inchmarnock, where a little bit of westerly wind returned. I thought that I should steer around the seaward side of the island, as the sound was likely to be calm in the lee. The return of the wind was welcome, we were falling rather behind schedule

The views here are stunning, Arran lies to the south, and the Kintyre peninsula about 5 miles west. There were huge shower clouds towering up, if Goat Fell on Arran is 2,800ft high then these must have been about 20,000ft, with white tops, shading into grey, and deeper, darker grey, then curtains of rain sweeping the sea.

We sloshed along under full sail in light variable westerly-ish winds, with a funny, lumpy sea, which I thought might have been reflected from the nearby rocky shore of the island. The seas got steeper, and bigger, and then one broke nearby, still with just a thimble full of wind… how odd: the chart shows deep water here, thirty-odd metres and more. Suddenly, all became glaringly obvious, a drench of rain, hardening sheets and we’re going hell for leather on a broad reach towards Garroch Head at the southerly tip of the island, with the wind spilling from the main and Collin leaning out trying to keep upright. Silly sod… I should have been keeping a better look-out; the shower clouds were moving more southerly than easterly, the low level wind was maybe 60° different to the upper air, and one had snuck up overland behind me. My own fault of course; I should have suspected something from the odd wave pattern, as well as keeping a better look out.

Still, the squall soon ended with only one dollop of water over the quarter, and we were well on our way towards the south end of Bute. Once round Garroch Head, the course for Gull Point at the south end of Little Cumbrae was more easterly, and I was able to experiment with goose winging the jib, holding it out with the bottom half of my fishing rod. This worked pretty well: an hour and five minutes got us the three miles across the shipping channel in the failing wind, and we swung onto a broad reach back towards Largs, quickly loosing ground to a big Dutch catamaran which was motor sailing in the same direction.

Off Hunterston, the wind failed again, and out came the oars for another couple of miles, before wafting up to the Yacht Haven entrance, which I passed about a hundred yards off. Just as well, there was a continuous stream of power boats and RIBS coming in and out, and though there’s a speed limit posted, some of these folk obviously had difficulty reading it.

Back to the slipway at 15:15, in time to get Madog back onto her trolley before the water got too far from the hard and dragging across the sand got to be too difficult. All in all a great trip, three sessions of rowing, two periods of quite windy weather, one shower (rain) off Inchmarnock and another (not rain) at Largs, about 37 nautical miles in 17 hours and forty minutes ‘sailing’. Recommended.