The Sisk family are a remarkable tribe around boats as around everything else with which they get involved. But perhaps the most remarkable of them all was John Sisk (1911-2001), who spearheaded the family construction company’s move from being a regional leader in Cork to a frontline national firm in Dublin, a quiet behemoth of a company which has continued on to international prominence.
He must have been one of the best-organised people on the planet. Despite a workload which would have felled a team of half a dozen super-talents, he always said that he was going to retire at the age of sixty. And he did exactly that, enjoying thirty years of pursuing other interests which fascinated, entertained or simply amused his always-active brain.
Lines of Cheerful Maid. Faced with John Sisk’s powers of quiet persuasion, London-based designer Robert Clark drew them in 1943 even as World War II raged about him.
And although there were times when keeping the company afloat in the economically-depressive days of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s must have required iron determination and enormous self-belief, he was able to pursue an interest in getting afloat for recreational purposes. But being John Sisk, this was no trivial pursuit – he wanted to build boats to the plans of the leading international designers of the day.
Cheerful Maid in the West Pier yard in Dun Laoghaire around 1962 – she was an almost-perfect example of the Robert Clark designs of that era. Photo courtesy Hal Sisk
Thus even though World War II was at its height, he was in correspondence with Robert Clark in London, and in 1943 persuaded Clark to design a 40ft cruiser-racer sloop which was to emerge in 1949 as the very handsome Cheerful Maid, built at the Sisk-backed Dalkey Shipyard at Bulloch Harbour, it was a yard which subsequently went on to acquire a name for the series-production of Folkboats.
Meanwhile, the busy Sisk mind was pursuing another Scandinavian line of interest. While other Irish owners were beginning to incline towards James McGruer in Scotland for boats to the new International 8 Metre Cruiser/Racer Rule, John Sisk was in a fruitful exchange of ideas with the Swedish designer Knud Reimers.
The pans of Marian Maid as featured in the Yachting World Annual 1954. Design novelties included an aft-facing auxiliary engine
The result was the Reimers take on this new concept which the designer so liked that two boats were built to the design, a sloop-rigged version in Sweden for the designer himself and – unusually - a yawl-rigged one, Marian Maid (it being the Marian Year of 1954) for John Sisk built by Dalkey Shipyard, his business setup which seems to have been a moveable feast spread between Bulloch Harbour and Dun Laoghaire’s West Pier.
Although John Sisk was a longtime member of the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, as his son Hal recalls, he was too busy to be a really “clubbable man”. Thus he hadn’t had the time to cultivate a sufficiently seasoned crew to race and cruise Cheerful Maid despite getting her an RORC rating, but after she was sold away and became Sainte Anne under noted offshore sailor D H F Williams in the south of England, she made more of a mark for herself.
John Sisk – despite being accustomed to a prodigious work rate, he retired exactly when he said he would, at the age of 60, which allowed him thirty years of active retirement. Photo courtesy Hal Sisk
Equally, with Marian Maid the light use for family sailing purposes made for little impact on the Dublin Bay sailing scene, even if like Cheerful Maid she’d featured as an interesting design in a major sailing publication, with Cheerful Maid in The Yachtsman in 1945, while Marian Maid had something of a splash in the Yachting World Annual of 1954, which would have been published in December 1953.
As to how and why Dalkey Shipyard included The Turkish Republic among its key customers we can only guess, but what’s for sure is that despite his name appearing nowhere on the letterhead, John Sisk was the main man behind the company. Courtesy Hal Sisk
As the years went by, John Sisk’s correspondence with noted designers moved up a step further with an exchange of letters with Olin Stephens in New York. Sisk was looking for a boat around the One Ton size with added competitive potential for his growing sons, and in the mid-1960s, Stephens revealed that the company’s new design for a 36ft race-oriented fin-and-skeg fibreglass sloop would actually be in production in Italy as the Gaia 36 before she was due to appear as the much-heralded Swan 36 from Finland.
Thanks to John Sisk’s continuing correspondence with Olin Stephens, the Italian-built Sarnia was in action in Ireland long before her Finnish-built hull sister, the Swan 36, was seen here
Thus Sarnia arrived from Italy in Dun Laoghaire to introduce the new era of very stylish fibreglass cruiser-racers, and she has been in Ireland ever since. As for the first of the Sisk performance cruisers, it’s only known that by 1980, when the last of the Lloyd’s Registers was published, Sainte Anne (ex-Cheerful Maid) was no longer in it. But for someone with the time, a fast-moving computer, and the USB with all the Lloyds Registers which was created by the Association of Yachting Historians with Hal Sisk as Chairman, it might be possible – perhaps with additional resources - to find out what became of this remarkable product of late 1940s Bulloch Harbour Yacht building.
Marian Maid in Dublin Bay after her 2002 restoration. Photo: W M Nixon
The classic Marian Maid – designer Knud Reimers liked the look of her so much in 1954 that he had a sister-ship built for himself
Meanwhile, Marian Maid is back in Dun Laoghaire, owned by George and Hal Sisk and Hal's son Owen, and immaculately restored by Jimmy Murphy and Peter Sweetman and Sisk boat specialist Ian Squire with the team at Rossbrin Boatyard in West Cork, where the up-dating mods have included the installation of an electric auxiliary engine.
It’s not the first time Marian Maid has undergone a major restoration. Back in 2002 she arrived in Dun Laoghaire after a restoration commissioned by Patrick McHugh in northwest England. But when he became ill, a prolonged period for the Maid in the boatyard at Holyhead Marina – where all the winds of heaven seems to blow with extra vigour – put everything back to Square One.
Jimmy Murphy of Rossbrin Boatyard in West Cork – his team’s restoration of Marian Maid has included the installation of an electric auxiliary engine
However, with the standards set by the late Edmund Kreugel at Rossbrin continuing, Maid Marian is completely herself again, ready to be the flagship in the Parade of Classics at Dun Laoghaire on the morning of Sunday, July 2nd to introduce the week-long Coastival, leading into the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta from Thursday, July 5th to Sunday, July 9th.
As an event, the VDLR is – let’s face it - the ultimate in clubbability. Were he still with us, John Sisk would probably much prefer to be away from its mega-partying, alone at his desk in email communication with some rising international design star, and bouncing around fresh ideas for a new boat which would be so good the designer would want one for himself.
