In the baking summer of 2003, I had a job on a boat taking tourists through the third strongest whirlpool in the world. Rushing between Scarba and Jura on Scotland’s Atlantic Coast, Corryvreckan produces towering standing waves and a foaming swirl of water which the Admiralty describes as “very violent and dangerous”.
“No vessel should,” it says, “attempt this passage without local knowledge.”
In the mornings, before taking daytrippers round the north end of Luing where, usually, we’d be greeted by a playful dolphin I named Bill the Bottlenose, on out through the perilous straits and into the ocean beyond, we’d often stand on the pontoon as the skipper, Duncan, gave careful advice to a queue of sailors. He was the local knowledge.
