Easy as she goes

IF YOU WANT TO SEE SCOTLAND PROPERLY, THEN WHY NOT SAIL ITS CANALS? MAXWELL MCDONALD TOOK A VOYAGE INTO THE UNKNOWN

It was still dark night when I untied the ropes and pushed her out onto the southern end of the freezing-cold Caledonian Canal at Banavie.

I suppose it must have been about 7am. Still dark, but only just. Certainly, the darkness had a hint of grey in it as we (that's ‘Coinbra', my yacht, and I) buzzed along the canal under outboard motor and at a snuffling four miles an hour.

After about half an hour of this, the sun sort of oozed through the freezing grey mist until it sat like a fuzzy white golf ball suspended over the stirring town of Fort William.

And on the canal, 70 feet above the town, I started to sing. Sing loudly in the bitter dawn. Maybe it was the whisky in the porridge I had just gulped down. Maybe it was utter desperation. Maybe I had gone mad.

Rationally, I certainly had no reason to sing. An hour earlier, when I had woken, cold and stiff on my hellishly uncomfortable bunk, my cursed idea of sailing my daft wee yacht up the Caledonian Canal in late November had seemed to be one of the worst mistakes I had ever made in a life in which there was plenty of competition.

We keep our wee boat in the summer near Fort William at one end of the canal, and in the winter at the other end, at Inverness. Lying in a hot bath with a whisky in my hand in August, I had come up with this ludicrous idea. I would spend three days sailing up the Caledonian Canal in the winter to Inverness … it would be fun, an adventure. It's a terrible thing, the drink. Mind you, I do lo...

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• By : Maxwell MacLeod
• In : Outdoor Scotland
• Issue : 7
• Page : 22
• Words : 1,496