We go sailing in a remarkable number of places. There’s messing about in what is pretentiously called the ‘training area’, that rough rectangle upstream of Grassy Beach formed by the reclaimed land where the oil rigs sometimes tie up, and the tide is much less (but there’s rocks and it’s shallow and John managed to capsize within about 10 metres of the shore). That’s OK for an early season toe-dipping, but not very exciting unless you pretend you’re going to sail under an oil rig.

Often enough though, that sail ends on Lucky Scalp, where I have been so many times that it’s more boring than the training area. Unless, that is, somebody reports you as seeming in trouble, and the onshore lifeboat rushes over and up the beach at considerable cost to its propeller to check you’re all right, interrupting your leisurely picnic on the beach, which’s happened a couple of summers ago, as I recall.

Or it ends on Tentsmuir beach just short of the fence marking the beginning of the nature reserve, which is more exciting as you can sail back round the back of Lucky Scalp, avoiding the sticky up poles (not quite visible at high tide), and the Mini-Cooper stuck in the mud (totally invisible at anything less than low tide).

But sometimes, and not often enough, we get through the Pool and round into St Andrews Bay . It’s a very long haul past Kinshaldy Beach (though you can land in the Nature Reserve, and wait for the Ranger on his quad bike, to turn up and complain, so you can wind him up). It’s worth it, though, to get to St Andrews , as long as it’s the East Sands. The West Sands are just not enough.

It’s got to be the East Sands because it’s so much more difficult to tack in there against the prevailing wind. But for me, the East Sands is all tied up with the first big sail I did with the Club in Malcolm’s boat, when the wind got up, and he had to reef on the water with me, and another incompetent, as crew. Which improved his temper no end, though not half as much as the rather excessively exciting sleighride we had thereafter coming back over the Abertay Sands with 2 metre waves (I think), when he lost his sailing hat and insisted on doing a Hat Overboard drill. The hat drowned just the same.

My favourite, though, is going upstream, as there’s simply more to see. Not perhaps as far as Bridge of Earn , where Dave Combes led us many years ago, launching at 1pm, arriving there, right at the bridge on the old main road at about 6pm. Which meant Cliff in the rescue boat (which had to wait in the Tay, as the Earn was too shallow, till we got back round all those meanders, towed in a line by Dave Combes’ outboard), was going spare, and we had to sail home in the dark with no lights, which was actually surprisingly easy with the bridges silhouetted against the lights of Dundee, though a bit dicey when the sand boat going up to Perth chugged past without, I presume, seeing us at all.

And you don’t have to go as far as that, since Balmerino, Flisk Point, Jock’s Hole and Newburgh will do if there’s not enough tide. Indeed, there’s nothing like just getting up to the Road Bridge and through the arches against the tide, if you can, and back in an hour-and-a-half’s evening sail (as long as you don’t break your centre-board the like Charlie Bruce did).

The Tay is not bad for sailing.

Reliant Robin