Cruising the Crinan Canal

Can you imagine looking down a hill from a sailboat to the sea; Or your boat being overtaken by
joggers, horses and cyclists. How about boat after boat with fenders out both sides looking like baubles at Christmas. This latter to minimise damage from accidental bumps in a narrow waterway.

Our passage through the Crinan Canal was one of the highlights of our recent Scottish cruise. This nine mile shortcut through fifteen locks across the North of the Mull of Kintyre saves up to 100 miles, and in times past was the fastest route between Glasgow and the North of Scotland.

We entered from the Firth of Clyde at Ardrishaig in Loch Fyne. Having skimmed the guide book we intended to spend the night tied to the jetty, get a good reconnoitre of the sea loch, read up on the instructions, and enter the canal in the morning after a good night's rest.

- What was that saying about the plans of mice and men?

The lochkeeper waved us straight through, directly into the sea loch. A hurried rearrangement of warps; a few frantic minutes of shouted instructions; shortening ropes; the deafening crash of half a million litres of water filling the loch; then calm, and we were sitting in still water having climbed our first fifteen feet.

With just two of us the thought of making our way through the canal was daunting, but we quickly fell into a routine and we were soon comfortably managing the lochs. It was usually up to Catherine to heave open the massive gates, I stopped feeling guilty when I saw a child of about ten doing it. Later I discovered that the gates were so well balanced that one had only to lean on them.

We spent our first night in the still water of the canal basin in Ardrishaig with an assortment of fellow transients and permanently moored boats. On our first full day it took us only a couple of hours to climb to Cairnbaan at the summit. Though at sixty five feet above sea level “summit”

seemed something of an overstatement. The following day we went down through the lochs to Crinan where the local hotel's food was really super.

The third morning we said good bye to the friends we'd made in the canal. We were tempted to stay longer, but the Hebridean Islands beckoned and our time was limited.

Once in the open sea, and conscious that our engine had been in tick over for three days, we gave it its full compliment of 3,000 revs and raced across a calm Crinan Bay. We turned north to Ardfern for a night’s rest before negotiating "Dorus Mor" and its eight knots of tide.

But the “Big Door” would have to wait as once again that phrase about mice and men comes to mind, and we remained weather bound for the next three days. But that's another tale.

Doing it Shorthanded

The lochs were about 25 by 10 metres, with a ladder near the entrance to starboard and another near the exit to port. I rigged long fore and aft lines with one metre diameter loop bowlined on the ends, both led back to separate winches in the cockpit.

On the ascent we would enter the loch on the starboard, Catherine holding a spring line attached to our midships cleat. As I stopped the boat, she would pass this through the ladder and tie on, climb the ladder with the two long lines and drop the loops over shore cleats fore and aft. I would pull in the slack and untie the spring while Catherine closed the loch gates behind us and opened the sluices to fill the loch.

There was quite an amount of turbulance as the water gushed through, but we minimised it by staying at the back of the loch. While we rose I kept the tension in the lines by shortening them from the cockpit. Once the loch was full we would open the gates on the other side, push off and drive through.

Descending was even easier, Catherine stayed ashore and opened the sluices. We tied on the long fore and aft lines, and I eased them out as we went down. At the bottom I would tie on the spring and Catherine would open the gates, unhook the other lines, then down the ladder, release the spring and off we went.Our respective roles fell naturally as Catherine is not yet happy to manage the boat on her own. This meant that it was usually up to her to heave open the massive loch gates, however I stopped feeling guilty when I saw a child of about ten doing it with ease. I subsequently discovered that the gates were so well balanced that one had only to lean against them. Indeed pushing harder served little purpose against hundreds of tons of water.

Approaching each loch there was usually a pontoon to tie on to while opening the gates, and another one once through, so that you can go back and close the gates after you. We were usually lucky in that as we approached the lochs there was often another boat coming, and we could leave the gates open for each other.

There were also a number of bridges to be negotiated, operated by British Waterways personnel. Most were beside lochs, so there was plenty of time for them to see us coming, but in remote places we announced our approach with a timely blast on the foghorn.