The History of the Royal Highland Yacht Club
The Royal Highland Yacht Club, founded in 1881, is one of Scotland's oldest yacht clubs. The Club is proud to have been granted an Admiralty Warrant enabling permits to be issued for members to wear the undefaced blue ensign on their yachts.
The Club was originally founded and based in Oban, with substantial premises ashore (now the Lancaster Hotel). The original members would have been the proud owners of yachts of up to five-hundred tons, and at the Argyllshire Gathering and Oban Regatta there might well have been as many as a hundred yachts seen at anchor in Oban bay, together with a few Royal Navy warships anchored outside.
It would have been a fine sight on a summer's day, greatly enhanced by the throng of people also assembled for the games and other shore-side activities.
After two world wars, the club house had been lost through wartime requisition and members' yachts gradually became smaller with no "paid hands" and thus were more easily able to lie together in sheltered waters.
West Highland Yachting Week, Oban, 1962
