STANLEY Ross, an engineer at a battery factory in Caithness, had been fascinated by the lure of the sea and ships ever since he was a young boy.
When he lost his job, he at last had the chance to fulfil a lifelong ambition by starting a new career as a fisherman.
He used his savings to buy a 27ft open-decked boat, the Boy John, from a skipper in Arbroath, and last week he set out on the v
oyage back home he hoped would transform his fortunes.
But yesterday he was branded an irresponsible idiot by the emergency services after he was revealed as the "Captain Calamity" who sparked an air and sea search by becoming hopelessly lost in the storm-lashed expanse of the North Sea.
Mr Ross ran up a rescue bill of more than £30,000 and came close to dying when he became disorientated after setting sail from Peterhead, bound for Scrabster, in his blue-hulled craft.
The hapless sailor had no working radio, no relevant charts or any way of fixing his position, and two emergency flares were out of date. Even the anchor he had on board was not connected to the vessel by a rope or a chain.
Mr Ross, 36, only had a mobile phone for use in an emergency. Frustrated Coastguards, trying to keep track of his erratic voyage across the Moray Firth, were forced to send him a text message, urging him to call 999 and ask for the coastguard, after he was reported overdue at Wick, his first port of call in Caithness.
Mr Ross told the coastguard he thought he was in the Dornoch Firth. But by then, he was in the Pentland Firth, one of the most dangerous stretches of water around Scotland's coast, and 75 miles from where he thought he was. His boat was drifting close to rocks off Orkney when he was rescued by the crew of the Longhope lifeboat.
At the height of the emergency an RAF Sea King helicopter, three lifeboats, an inshore rescue craft and eight Coastguard search teams were looking for the sailor.
Yesterday, as an unrepentant Mr Ross recovered on the island of Hoy, coastguards made a scathing attack on him.
Mark Clark, a coastguard spokesman, declared: "The fact that he thought he was in the Dornoch Firth and he ended up in the Pentland Firth would suggest that the guy doesn't have a clue. When we told him on Saturday morning that his radio was defective you would expect him to go and put it right, but he didn't."
Mr Ross was adamant he had the experience and gear to make the voyage.
"I've been around boats and fishing all my life," he said. "I had the experience for what should have been a straightforward trip. I only planned to be at sea in daylight, in sight of the shore. The weather conditions were pretty drastic and I was blown far further north than I expected."
In the darkness he ended up sailing across the Pentland Firth and was 20 yards from rocks when he was taken under tow by the lifeboat.
He admitted: "Another few minutes and the boat would have been matchwood - and so would I."
The alarm was raised by Mr Ross's girlfriend, Jenna Simpson, 22, who is expecting their baby in February.
HOPES SUNK
A RETIRED policeman was rescued after abandoning his sinking yacht off the coast of South America.
John Grant, 58, from Ballachulish, Inverness-shire, who is sailing from Scotland to New Zealand, hit a violent storm on Friday which damaged his yacht Seabird.
He had set sail from Brazil, but was picked up by a Dutch merchant vessel who heard his SOS call and was last night on his way back to Rio Grande.
The full article contains 639 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
