A sailor's life is most definitely not for me

Sailing turns the easiest going people into martinets. If you don't do what you're told, skippers get shirty

Through the crystal clear lens of my tripod-mounted Russian telescope (designed for the first Soviet astronaut, the man in the second-hand shop told me – yes they certainly do use tripods on Sputniks) I can just make out a sail on the horizon. I daresay it could be one of the sheets I hung out on the line this morning, carried by the prevailing force 8 across the loch to the island where we had our first picnic this summer but, with West Highland Week starting tomorrow, Scotland's answer to Cowes, it's probably a sail.

This is perfect sailing weather – bakingly hot, 27 degrees according to Radio Oban and so windy that I've had to tie the sun umbrella to the table leg or, like yesterday, it will take off and land upside down in the field of meadow sweet along with my washing. I used to like sailing. We met our American friends from Westchester County on a sailing holiday in Croatia when it was still Yugoslavia. Dorothy is less keen than Ted on the actual sailing but she likes keeping everything shipshape.

I didn't appreciate the extent of Dorothy's shipwife skills until they invited us to dinner one night on their boat. It was a flotilla holiday so all the boats were basically the same: no-frills furnishing, heavy duty tableware, etc. Not Dorothy's. There was a starched linen cloth on the table in the galley, flowers, candlesticks, brimming bowls of fruit. We'd been to the market at Troghir that afternoon where all we came across was a wrinkled old woman sitting in front of a tray containing two wrinkled old tomatoes. Where on earth had Dorothy come by that cornucopia of golden delicious, peaches, pineapples?

Why, from the US of course, said Dorothy. She always brings their food with her. Ted has to have his Poupon mustard, his relish, his special high-fibre cereal to say nothing of his Italian coffee-maker, his Waterford glasses, even his coasters – wasn't that right Ted? If you say so, honey, said Ted.

Sailing turns the easiest going people into martinets. If you don't do exactly what you're told – reef this, shiver that, splice the other, and what's more, at the double – skippers get incredibly shirty. There's no such thing as messing about in boats, they will tell you. The sea is a dangerous place. You have to have discipline.

Before he went to prison for fraud, our solicitor – a slight, mild man with thinning hair and a Dachshund called Bosun – was a fanatical yachtsman. Every weekend in winter he scraped barnacles off the bottom of his boat, The Lady Vanishes and every weekend in summer, he'd be off somewhere, in his Guernsey sweater and his yachting cap. One year, he decided to sail The Lady Vanishes across the Atlantic from the Canaries to Antigua to take part in that smart regatta they have every year at English Harbour. He invited four friends to crew for him and, full of boisterous camaraderie like guests at a stag party, they flew to Gran Canaria.

They never made it to Antigua. Mild and unassuming he may have been on dry land, but at sea, our ex-solicitor turned out to be a cross between Captain Hook and Mr Squeers. Everything had to be measured out, even the water for cleaning their teeth. Everything had to be folded his way, including pyjamas. Every night before dinner, he read a passage from Master and Commander, his favourite Patrick O'Brian novel, after which they toasted Lord Nelson, Captain Aubrey, and Mrs Villers, God bless her.

The punch came when he caught one of his crew telephoning his girlfriend. "But it's my mobile," protested the culprit. "It didn't matter, it could be interfering with some vital weather transmission," said Captain Squeers. It was a toss-up which came first, flogging or the mutiny.

It sounds grim, I said to a mutineer afterwards, though I wouldn't have minded the pre-prandial readings. I love Patrick O'Brian. I've read all of his 18 sea-faring novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars, which is probably why I've gone off modern sailing.

Let them that must, sail to Tobermory or Antigua in trim, little fibre-glass yachts called Bumblebee. If I can't have an old-fashioned man o' war full of dashing young ram-you dam-you midshipmen called Mr Babington and Mr Parslow, baring down on a French privateer broadside firing 36-pounders across the enemy's bows, I'd rather stay at home with my telescope. Armchair sailing suits me fine.