Cameron McColl tells Daniel Pembrey about his epic voyage home at the helm of classic yacht Jura II.
Entering London’s St Katharine Docks by boat is neither straightforward nor forgettable. Cameron McColl had done it before but in a smaller boat. On 9 May 2023, he was negotiating the dock in his 37-metre steel-hulled motor yacht Jura II, which is only three metres shorter than the length of the entry lock. The real challenge was the current strength.
“The current of the Thames typically runs at four-and-a-half knots, but it can run faster,” McColl says in his soft Scottish accent. “Often, the river authorities can only estimate when slack tide occurs to within plus or minus 40 minutes. Entering the lock requires you to come upstream past the lock’s entrance, then come around, pointing into it. If there is current, it tends to take the back of the boat away.”
McColl had lived outside the UK since 2007. Born and raised in Edinburgh, and having prospered in the Californian tech industry, he was based in the BVIs, but eager to return for a few weeks to his homeland – the northern part in particular. Owners’ voyages can offer exotic external spectacles, fabulous wildlife and sublime undersea activities; for McColl, this was to be an emotional journey, inside himself, back to his roots.
It was a bright enough day. Onlookers, congregating beside neighbouring Tower Bridge, were drawn to the spectacle of the classically styled, cream 1963 yacht, backdropped by the Gothic-style towers of the big bridge. “You can’t drop your anchor and hang out,” says McColl. “That’s not allowed.”
Arrival here is the culmination of many hours and miles journeying up the Thames Estuary, struggling against the current, progressing past the atmospheric Shivering Sands Second World War forts on stilts and the monumental former Tate & Lyle sugar refinery, then through the highly choreographed Thames Barrier. “You need to watch out for sandbanks, fast-moving commercial vessels and traffic lights,” McColl continues. “There are 14 different radio ‘calling in’ points. You really do need to be on your game.”
The destination, beside a pool historically known (for good reason) as Dead Man’s Hole, has had its fair share of action. Above here, one night in 1997, a Tower Bridge operator called Glen Ellis began a scheduled bridge lift for the sailing barge Gladys. As the road gates closed, Ellis’s phone rang – it was Scotland Yard, ordering him to abort the lift: President Bill Clinton’s motorcade was about to come across the bridge.
Not only was the bridge lift required by law (river traffic takes priority), but the barge had the tide behind it. Said Ellis, “I couldn’t have imagined the next day’s headlines if Gladys had smashed into the bridge while the President was crossing.”
As on that night in 1997, all ended well on 9 May 2023. With the aid of squeaking fenders, Jura II eased into the entry lock without being propelled by the current on to the lock’s far sill. Onlookers whooped and applauded. Inside the dock, Brown Owl and Letitia, two of the “Little Ships of Dunkirk” – in town for His Majesty the King’s Coronation – greeted McColl and his party.
“It all left a most vivid impression,” he says. “I saw how the great cities such as London are meant to be approached and viewed: from the water. These cities grew up around their rivers.” Not for nothing did Churchill declare: “The Thames is no ordinary waterway; it is the golden thread of our nation’s history.”
Arrival in McColl’s home city of Edinburgh, four days after leaving St Katharine Docks, was a more genteel affair. Having negotiated eastern shoals and vast wind farms, his approach up the Firth of Forth was eventful enough, passing by the Bass Rock, white from the teeming birdlife, with the engineering marvel of the rust-red Forth Rail Bridge hovering hazily ahead. The size of Jura II required her to make for the commercial harbour in the Port of Leith, but unlike on the busy River Thames, it was blessedly accessible at all hours.
Indeed, the only other vessel berthed inside was the glossy Royal Yacht Britannia. The normally phlegmatic late Queen shed a tear as the yacht was decommissioned in 1997. Though three times the length of Jura II, she too had been built in Scotland. Jura II’s curving horizontal lines and gracefully slanting verticals bear strong resemblance to the restrained aesthetic.
“Something’s been lost along the way,” says McColl. “The concept of beauty isn’t sufficiently to the fore [with modern yachts]. Boats today are built to fit a certain size of dock; they have to be a certain width and length, then the only way to go is up, resulting in top-heavy yachts, with far too much superstructure. They just don’t look as elegant.”
Jura II was built on spec in 1963. She came to be owned by Italy’s Ferruzzi industrialist dynasty and played a starring role as the party boat of Venice’s Hotel Cipriani, hosting Italian film stars and politicians. “The whole upper sundeck is open,” explains McColl. “You can have 30 to 40 people up there for a party.”
Downstairs, the main deck saloon is more intimate. Given the less clement weather in Scotland, the saloon and dining room would become favoured spots during this voyage, although the upper deck would serve as an ideal viewing platform. The detailing is also significant: “The incandescent bulb lights lend great warmth and charm in the evenings. There is a lot of polished chandlery too, also beautifully crafted wood – not just in the decking but also in the balustrades and furniture.”
McColl had grown up a mile or so from the Port of Leith, in which he has now spent a month aboard Jura II. His father was a customs officer and then perks of the job made their way home: “Our house was full of whisky – the good stuff: single malts.”
His father was also a talented carpenter and one project involved making a wooden speedboat, which McColl outfitted and piloted on the Firth of Forth. McColl went on to study engineering at Edinburgh University and was heavily involved in the overhaul of Jura II at the Aganlar shipyard in Turkey, in 2021. That involved the dismantling and rebuilding of the boat’s Kelvin diesel engines.
Efficiency is key, says McColl: “The engines are 60 years old, but because they’re turning over so slowly at a cruising speed of eight or nine knots, and are under such little stress, we consume just 50 litres an hour with both engines and a generator running.” It makes longer-range sailing, such as Atlantic crossings, feasible, and it highlights her greatest strength of all: the full-displacement hull.
The Turkish shipyard preferred to salvage and grind down the steel there rather than replace it, so superb was its quality. The concave-shaped bow slices through waves or eases through calmer waters, sacrificing some internal space for supreme comfort of passage. The canoe-shaped stern allows a “following sea” to gently lift her rather than crash over her. “Today, boatbuilders rely on computer simulations, but in 1963, they built a model of the hull and tank tested it at Aberdeen University.”
“They” refers to Hall, Russell & Co, Aberdeen. And so it was with a deep sense of satisfaction that McColl captained the doughty Jura II up through the turbulent North Sea, offshore from the place of her creation. She too was returning to the area of her birth.
Further north still, beneath Kessock Bridge in the Moray Firth, a pod of dolphins appeared beside the hull, speeding through the pellucid waters; surfacing, cresting; almost suspended, before plunging into the rifled, grey-green underwater tunnels, so beautifully adapted were they from their gleaming bottle noses to the flukes of their tails. The joyous abandon with which they leapt and hovered prompted gasps from the upper sundeck, then sighs as they vanished from view.
McColl felt a lightening, lifting sensation as he neared the heart of his journey: Seòlaid a’ Ghlinne Mhòir – Gaelic for “Waterway of the Great Glen”, better known as the Caledonian Canal. “Ever since I bought the boat I’d wanted to sail it,” he says of the geological fault that practically cleaves ancient Scotland in two, in a perfectly straight line, north-east to south-west.
The Great Glen claims some of the most beautiful bodies of water in the world. In the early 19th century, Scottish engineer Thomas Telford linked the water bodies from Inverness on the east coast to Fort William on the west coast, sparing shipowners the long way round treacherous Cape Wrath, all in a bid to revive the Highlands during a time of economic depression and mass emigration.
Telford accomplished this via a canal system measuring 35 kilometres in length of cuttings – or 96 kilometres in total, including the natural lochs – and featuring 11 bridges and 29 locks. The highest point is more than 32 metres above sea level.
A twinge of trepidation remained for McColl, however. While the Caledonian Canal is challenging in a vessel of any size, Jura II is realistically the longest size of boat you could sail here. “We ended up with only 1.5 metres to spare at either end in some of the locks,” he recounts.
Each step of the way, the movement of the boat had to be planned out. St Katharine Docks had been but a dry, or rather wet, run. “We arranged the itinerary with the lock-keepers, who were very accommodating. The boat was so relatively big that when she moved, there often couldn’t be any other traffic in a lock or given stretch of canal. The low, June water levels only increased the challenge. There is supposed to be three metres draught, yet if we moved out of the centreline of the canal, we would occasionally be touching.”
All of this was a distant thought on mythic, 36-kilometre-long Loch Ness in the north-east. “The mountains around that loch are just gorgeous,” he says. “It is so still, and deep [up to 240 metres]. It is completely surrounded by forest, a lot of it old Caledonian pine.”
So long as there were bikes and hiking boots aboard, the towpaths would become excellent jumping-off points for excursions, including a memorable trek up the vivid green river valley Glen Nevis – like some lost world, or location from the film Jurassic Park.
The views from Jura II could prove most beguiling of all. “In the year of my birth, my grandfather bought an old stone cottage near Braemar where we’d spend the late summers,” reminisces McColl. “When I looked out of the dining room window, I’d see snow-capped mountains, the biggest being Ben Macdui – the second-tallest mountain in the UK. I realised I was looking at essentially the same scene through the windows of the boat, seeing snow-dusted Ben Nevis – just 30 metres taller than Macdui; no mist, the clearest of views: instantly familiar.”
Too soon came the descent back to sea level, down Neptune’s Staircase, which drops 19 metres through eight locks over a quarter of a mile, taking four hours. Onlookers gathered once more. “We must feature in a lot of tourists’ phone videos,” jokes McColl. Adding to the tension were the dreaded west coast midges. “I’d plotted the radius that midges will travel and it’s more than 100 metres from shore.”
Finally Jura II emptied out into a long sea loch, but the respite was short-lived. “A lot of these sea lochs have narrow points where the current is strong, the water shallow and, if you don’t get your timing right, it’s hard to pass.” So it proved on Loch Linnhe at Corran, and further south with the Corryvreckan Whirlpool, where an undersea mountain peak can create a standing wave four-and-a-half metres tall. “Like a waterfall in the middle of the sea,” marvels McColl.
At Kylerhea, the tide ran similarly fast through the narrows between the island of Skye and the mainland, making it tricky to steer. “It can take the back of the boat away, like in London but far worse; you have to do back bearings, looking behind to ensure you’re in line with where you’re heading towards.”
The name Skye allegedly comes from the Norse words for cloud and island. “There is still something of an Odyssey up there,” wrote D H Lawrence about the island a century ago, “the sea running far in, for miles, between the wet, trickling hills, where the cottages are low and almost invisible, built into the earth...”
Skye proved its own homecoming for McColl. “Many years ago, I took a beautiful Swan 65 sailing yacht on the Highland Malt Cruise [now defunct], going from distillery to distillery, and we stopped at the Talisker Distillery in Skye. We had such a fantastic time. There was meant to be a race the next day; we, and half the other boats, never made it.”
Now his youngest son, having sailed solo around the world, runs a campsite close to the Skye Bridge and has bought a cottage outside the nearby town of Plockton, where palm trees and other exotic plants betray the unexpectedly northern flow of the Gulf Stream. With the white sandy beaches and aquamarine waters, shared by the BVIs, the segments of McColl’s life were telescoping together, into a harmonious whole.
On 17 July – 69 days after arriving at St Katharine Docks – they made landfall on the remote Hebridean island of Tiree. “Some of the best moments of life come when you forget where and who you are, and suddenly you’re back home kicking a ball around with your dad or the other kids, on the playing fields behind your house on unending summer evenings. Only, here, it was locals from the waterfront pub inviting us for a sunset barefoot beach football match.” No matter that Team Jura II lost 3-1: “just magical”.
On the way back to the mainland, Jura II made one more stop, at the uninhabited island of Staffa – specifically at Fingal’s Cave, carved into a tall dome of volcanic rock, the hexagonal shaping of which calls to mind the Giant’s Causeway across the water in Ireland. The Atlantic puffins are one draw, but the main one is the sea cave.
“You think it extends a few metres but it’s more like 40,” says McColl, his voice quietening. “The water is crystal clear and surprisingly deep. Soon, all natural light from the cave opening is lost. There’s an intensely tangy, briny smell, and sharp acoustics amplifying the lapping sounds, for the rock ceiling is tall, like a cathedral’s. I felt at peace there.”
He pauses. “What the west coast of Scotland means to me is somewhere quiet, and dark, with a true sense of majesty – the weight of the ages bearing hauntingly down. But all still intensely alive, today.”
It was a fitting culmination for a rite-of-passage voyage involving so many echoes of his past, and experiences that will surely reverberate long into his future. “It’s tempting to want to do it again, but it couldn’t be bettered.” Much like that boat’s name, I ask? “Ah yes, well, the previous boat of mine was called Jura, and those Hebridean islands and that name can’t really be improved upon either, so Jura II she became.”
And in case you’re wondering, the namesake malt whisky with the smoky finish is his joint favourite – tied only with Skye’s Talisker.
First published in the September 2024 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.