The widely-mourned death of Clayton Love Jnr of Cork at the age of 94 may leave a void in the lives of his very large circle of family, friends and colleagues in many parts of the world and numerous areas of interest. But our environment - both at sea and on land - has ample evidence of his enduring enthusiasm and effectiveness in creating and nourishing structures – both organisational and in the built environment - which have been of great benefit to many. And his clear-sightedness in advocating projects with the bigger picture in mind, aided when necessary by his patient yet persuasive good humour, has helped development in Irish life at all levels despite the sometimes traumatic events of a lifetime of more than nine decades.
He was making his mark at an early age, for although a key period of his boyhood was to be in and around Cork Harbour while living through the limbo years of Ireland being in “The Emergency” with its neutral state through World War II, it was possible to sail a gradually increasing amount, even if boats had to make do without new sails, and any auxiliary engines were decommissioned.
CORK HARBOUR TO DUBLIN BAY INSIDE THE WARTIME MINEFIELDS
Despite the limitations, one of his fellow-sailors - the slightly older George Radley - had sailed his family’s 30ft Cork Harbour One Design from Cork Harbour to Dublin Bay in 1943 inside the wartime minefields. So in 1944, the 15-year-old Clayton Love and his team responded by sailing his own father’s 1898 cutter Tertia the same route to Dun Laoghaire.
They arrived in to be welcomed with a silver service breakfast at the somewhat bemused Royal Irish Yacht Club, whose news-starved distinctly senior members had to take on board the fact that a crew of schoolboys had managed to sail from Cork, minefields and auxiliary engineless state notwithstanding. But on top of that, during the time Tertia had been at sea, D-Day had taken place with the Allied Landings in Normandy, and that was complete news for Tertia’s young crew.
The 35ft 10-ton gaff cutter Tertia that 15-year-old Clayton Love Jnr and a crew of schoolboy friends sailed from Cork Harbour to Dublin Bay in 1944. Although Ireland was neutral in 1944 in World War II from 1939-45, the warring nations had laid minefields close to the Irish coast, and the voyage was a matter of close inshore pilotage the whole way. When they reached Dun Laoghaire to be welcomed with a silver service breakfast at the Royal Irish YC, they were told that the D-Day landings in Nomandy had taken place during their time at sea. Built by Thullier Brothers of Kinsale in 1898, Tertia was designed by a Church of Ireland clergyman, the Revd. S. P. Welsted, and was owned at the time of the Cork-Dublin sail by Clayton’s colourful father Clayon Love Senr. In 1950, Clayton Snr was to arrive into Cork Harbour with the newly-acquired 1946-built 21-ton Bermudan ketch re-named Galcador. The re-naming was because the boat had been paid for with a massively successful early bet on the French horse that won the 1950 Derby.
PEACE RETURNS
When peacetime slowly returned, and prosperity even more slowly, the formation of the mainly Dublin-centric Irish Dinghy Racing Association in 1945-46 resulted in the O’Brien Kennedy-designed clinker-built IDRA 14 dinghy becoming available for construction by Irish builders, and though the dinghy of choice around Cork Harbour was the International 12, Clayton’s substantial build meant the IDRA 14 was much more suited to his considerable sailing skills.
Soon the top local builder, the very skilled George Bushe, was being commissioned by Cork Harbour sailors to build the new boats. Being a canny bunch, however, some stipulated that George personally had to race the new boat at the increasingly popular IDRA Dinghy Week, and finish in the top three, before they would finalise the deal.
The IDRA 14s as they are today
THE NARROW ROAD AT LOUGH REE YACHT CLUB
Being now of an age where he could drive, and with an indulgent father providing a large car, Clayton and his group became an increasingly regular feature of Dinghy Weeks at many of Ireland’s choicest sailing ventures, and it was at the Week at Lough Ree in 1949 that he bumped into someone who was to become a lifelong friend, Liam McGonagle from Clontarf.
Like Clayton, the young McGonagle had been provided by his father with a large car and - like the Corkman - he had an IDRA 14 in tow and a group of close friends with him to see what mischief Lough Ree could provide. And they did indeed almost actually bump into one another, as they’d met head-to-head while driving too fast in opposite directions along a single-lane road.
Fortunately, instant friendships broke out before any blows could be exchanged, and it was to develop into special links between Howth – where the Clontarf sailors tended to relocate themselves as times prospered – and Cork, another connection being the enduring friendship between Cork’s Denis Doyle and Clontarf/Howth’s Ian Morrison.
Clayton Love guested as crewman and helm aboard Aylmer Hall’s classic Nicholson-designed International 12 Metre Flica II, the Queen of Cork Harbour in the 1950s. Photo: Tom Barker
But over the years, Clayton Love’s friendships in sailing and business extended to almost every corner of Ireland, and he had an international network too. Thus the young Clayton’s mark was already being put on the Irish sailing scene from an early age. But while his involvement with both dinghies and keelboats was in a state of continuing development during a lifetime of sailing, it was also clear that he had a talent - amounting at times to genius - for organising, and for innovation within established or newly-inaugurated administrative setups.
The very fact of listing the many organisations with which he was directly involved gives some idea of the breadth of interests of this modern Renaissance man, who used the long period of his very active retirement to broaden his extensive yet civilized reading and research even further.
THE IRISH DINGHY RACING ASSOCIATION BECOMES THE IRISH YACHTING ASSOCIATION
Nevertheless when we state that he became President of the Irish Dinghy Racing Association in the late 1950s, and had no sooner managed the Irish Team at the 1960 Sailing Olympic in Italy than he set about the surprisingly challenging and delicate tack of re-configuring the IDRA as the Irish Yachting Association, then we begin to get an idea of the scope of his activities.
Dunmore East during the 1955 Dinghy Week, when Clayton Love won the Helmsmans Championship. While the Fireflies were hauled ashore each evening, the IDRA 14s lay on a line of moorings, and in the harbour the 12 Metre Flica was among the boats which had come up to Dunmore to provide accommodation for the Cork dinghy crews
For he was already a figure of considerable standing in national dinghy sailing, having won the Helmsman’s Championship for the first of two times in 1955 at Dunmore East during his formative IDRA 14 racing years, while his second win came in 1960 when he was one of that very lively group who were bringing 505 racing to the main sailing centres in Ireland.
But with his background as the son of sailing and extensive cruising Cork businessman and ship’s chandler Clayton Love Snr – a notably colourful figure in his own right with his distinctive 21-ton ketch Galcador – the younger Clayton was well aware of the deep conservatism of the great Irish yacht and sailing clubs, with their history going back to the formation of the Water Club of the Harbour Cork in 1720 and beyond.
The 21-year-old Clayton Love Jnr (centre) at a dinner in the old Royal Cork YC at Cobh in 1950. His awareness of the club’s long and proud history helped in his negotiations to amalgamate the RCYC with the Royal Munster at Cork. Photo: Courtesy RCYC
He proved to be the ideal bridge between firmly established and new possibilities, both in sailing and business. For he had a gift for friendship, and despite the fact that he was clearly marked out to become someone very special, he much enjoyed maintaining his original comradeships from boyhood sailing around Cork Harbour, even as his circle of friends and associates became national and international.
The Cork Harbour One Designs, with Michael Sullivan’s 14-ton sloop Marchwood Maid and Denis Doyle’s ex-6 Metre Vaara, starting the annual Ocean Race from Cork to Kinsale in 1947. The CHOD class was won by the O’Regan family’s Cygnet from Cobh, with Clayton Love in the crew. Photo courtesy RCYC
Lifelong friends: Cygnet’s youthful crew in 1947 at Kinsale were (left to right) Henry Hennessy, Clayton Love Jnr, skipper Kevin O’Regan, Eamonn English and Pat Cagney. Three years previously while still schoolboys, they had sailed the X-ton cutter Tertia from Cork Harbour to Dun Laoghaire. They remained friends for life, though Clayton Love Jnr long outlived them all. Photo courtesy RCYC
In short, for those who had known him for many years, he was always approachable, with no needless airs or graces. For although he was hugely interested in setting up or running and improving some remarkably varied organisations, it was the human element that he most appreciated, enjoyed and valued, while he personally provided excellent company for any social situation in which he found himself.
At the inaugural Annual General Meeting of the Irish Yachting Association in Dun Laoghaire 1962 with (left to right) Brendan Haughton of Wicklow (Secretary General), Clayton Love Jnr of Cork (President) and Ronnie Finlay-Mulligan (Dun Laoghaire, Hon. Treasurer)
The new Irish Yachting Association worked enthusiastically with other national maritime bodies to promote their mutual interests, and boat-building legend Jack Tyrrell of Arklow (left, President of the Irish Federation of Marine Industries) is seen here with Clayton Love Jnr, President Irish Yachting Association, at the opening of a Dublin Boat Show.
And those situations were many, for even as he was bringing the Irish Yachting Association and its magazine Irish Yachting (now Afloat.ie) into being in 1962 with his brilliant kindred sailing spirit Jimmy Mooney of Dun Laoghaire – whose early death he found profoundly affecting - back home in Cork, Clayton Love Jnr was setting the building blocks in place to amalgamate the historic Royal Cork YC - with its splendid but out-dated waterfront pavilion in Cobh – with the greater potential of the Royal Munster Yacht Club in Crosshaven.
“Splendid but outdated” – the 1854-bult Royal Cork YC pavilion at Cobh was very limited in the amount of secure berthing it could provide for the needs of modern boats
The Crosshaven base had been the RMYC’s home only since 1923, as prior to that it was based in Monkstown. But with the Port of Cork’s inevitable growth down its great natural harbour, ships were becoming larger and shoreside industrial development was expanding. Thus it became increasingly logical to centralise the main base for sailing at Crosshaven, which was uniquely configured to prevent any significant industrial-scale intrusion while providing an excellent sailing base.
The modest former Royal Munster YC clubhouse at Crosshaven (above, photo: Dick Lane) had become the Royal Cork’s HQ by the time of the Quarter Millennium celebrations in 1969-70, but it took decades before Clayton Love’s legacy was completely fulfilled to provide today’s modern sailing centre (below). Photo: Robert Bateman
CREATING THE NEW YET CONTINUING VERSION OF THE WATER CLUB
But as Clayton himself was a Royal Cork member and had sailed as a boy with the “Cobh crowd”, he was ideally placed to foresee and diplomatically deal with the problems inherent in creating and fulfilling a vision for the re-birth of the Royal Cork YC across Cork’s great natural harbour at Crosshaven, not least of which was that it meant the demotion to “incorporation” in the merger for the well-loved 1872-founded Royal Munster YC.
That challenge would have been enough for most folk to be going along with, but he was already over the horizon beyond that, as he had early realized that 1970 would mark the Quarter Millennium of the foundation of the Royal Cork’s direct antecedent, the Water Club, and he felt it was essential that the refreshed version of the Club be in place and comfortable with itself when the time arrived for what proved to be a two-year international celebration in 1969-70.
Throughout all these sensitive negotiations in the Cork area, Clayton had continued as an active President of the Irish Yachting Association at national level, and his portfolio had been further increased when he was recruited in 1968 to be a founding member of Coiste an Asgard, that group of five people of wisdom and experience who had to find their way through the uncharted waters of making Erskine & Molly Childers’ historic 1905 Colin Archer ketch Asgard into Ireland’s first national sail training ship. By the time he stood down from this one of many positions, Ireland’s sail training ship was the universally admired 84ft brigantine Asgard II.
Asgard II making knots. Clayton Love Jnr was a founding member of Coiste an Asgard in 1968, and was still a serving member when the new Tyrrell-designed-and-built brigantine Asgard II was commissioned in 1981
But as it was dinghy sailing which had most nourished him, he continued racing dinghies with 505s until he was into his 40s, somehow finding the time in 1970 - despite being Admiral in the Royal Cork YC at the height of its Quarter Millennium Celebrations – to take part in the annual Dinghy Week, staged that year at Ballyholme on Belfast Lough.
Going good – Clayton Love and Neil Hegarty edge into the lead in the 505s at Ballyholme in 1970. Photo: W M Nixon
He had broad shoulders for administrative roles, as he was also still President of the Irish Yachting Association, and from his wide perspective he knew that Dinghy Week was now getting too big to be staged by most clubs. In fact, 1970 at Ballyholme was the last time it was staged in its all-classes traditional form, a “problem of success” which was attributable to many enthusiasts, not least Clayton Love himself.
Smooth sailing for their last dinghy campaign together – Clayton Love and Neil Hegarty sweeping along in the 505 Miss Betty at Ballyholme. Photo: W M Nixon
Signing off. Clayton Love Jnr, President of the Irish Yachting Association, and George Crowe, Commodore Ballyholme Yacht Club, at the conclusion of the successful Dinghy Week 1970. The event’s 1970 success was its undoing. Few - if any - other clubs were still capable of staging a multi-class dinghy regatta of this expanding size.
1970 drew to a close after the hugely-successful two year RCYC Quarter Millennial events, which had included a Transatlantic Race to Cork won by Ted Turner with the “cruiserfied” 12 Metre American Eagle and a large-fleet Cruise-in-Company to West Cork, as well as many national and international championships and an early version of Cork Week, the celebrations concluding with the Helmsmans Championship at Crosshaven in October.
NEW FOCUS
This was won by the 17-year-old Robert Dix of Malahide, a harbinger of changing patterns in the national sailing scene of which Clayton himself was part, as his sailing focus was changing with the acquisition of the 42ft 8 Metre Cruiser/Racer Fionnuala from Ross Courtney of Howth.
The 8 Metre Cruiser/Racer Fionnuala was Clayton Love's first seagoing keelboat.
And as his personal sailing focus developed, so too did the major organisations with which he was involved. By this time his profile in the Cork and national business scene was rising rapidly, as he made a speciality of pioneering suburban shopping centres, while also heading up significant logistics and distribution organisations and companies.
He was much in demand to join boards of directors, and from 1971 he found one of his many positions was a Chairman of the historic Cork brewers Beamish & Crawford. It gave him special pleasure to occupy a role once held by that that renowned Cork technological innovator and sailing development pioneer Arthur Sharman Crawford, but he brought his own style to the Chairmanship, and we get a flavour of it from the recollections of one of his PAs, a sailing enthusiast from a notably literate family, and like himself, a noted supporter of the RNLI.
Clayton Love in his busiest years – “his ideas could get ahead of his ability to find the words to fit them”.
“When he wished to dictate a letter” she recalls, “I realised that his thoughts and ideas were developing much faster than his spoken words could convey. So I suggested that he should tell me what he had in mind in a conversational way, I’d then go off and make a proper letter out of it, and if it was okay he could simply sign it. It worked very well”.
His status in the business community was such that in 1979-1980 he became President of the Cork Chamber of Commerce, an historic position to which he as usual added new life and possibilities, giving it a national and indeed international status in a difficult time. For the Troubles were at their height, yet thanks to Cork’s long-standing and traditionally close relationships with London that could effectively by-pass Dublin, civilized lines of communication could be and were maintained.
Whenever possible, he expanded the scope of the role to which he had been appointed. Clayton Love is seen here (right) as President of Cork Chamber of Commerce in a wide-ranging discussion with Veronica Sutherland, the British Ambassador to Ireland. Photo: Dan Linehan
MARRIAGE TO BETTY McCANN
Throughout all this hyper-active life afloat and ashore, he was reassuringly supported and sometimes quietly modified by his strong yet gentle wife Betty. She was of the noted McCann business family which is best known for its Dundalk links, but also had strong Cork connections through a holiday place in Baltimore.
Clayton’s feelings for her were demonstrated in many ways, and all his dinghies in both the IDRA 14 Class and the 505s were named Miss Betty, while their three children Clayton Minor, Sarah and Neill continued their parents’ belief in a strong family background to such an extent that at the time of his death, he had 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grand-children.
This remarkable spread of family had been reflected in the growing breadth of his sailing and nautical interests, for until the Quarter Millennium of the Royal Cork was satisfactorily brought to a conclusion in 1970, he had concentrated his own boat ownership on dinghies even if he was no stranger to sailing in boats as diverse as Cork Harbour ODs, the elegant Cork Harbour flotilla of International 8 Metres, Denis Doyle’s handsome 47ft Robert Clark sloop Moonduster, and that stately flagship of Cork Harbour in the 1950s, Aylmer Hall’s International 12 Metre Flica II.
CRUISING CLUB MEMBERSHIP
But with the Fionnuala ownership he was able to reinforce his move to cruiser-racers, and although he had regarded the Irish Cruising Club as very much his father’s territory – for Galcador and her doughty skipper had been awarded the ICC’s premier trophy, the Faulkner Cup, for a pioneering Mediterranean cruise in 1955 – in 1971 Clayton Jnr was elected to the ICC, and he was to go on to serve as ICC Rear Commodore in 1990, and so regularly an attender at ICC events that one of his last (and obviously enjoyed) public appearances was at an ICC Christmas Lunch in December 2022.
Assidous of 1974 was a Sparkman & Stephens-designed Swan 44 built by Nautor in Finland.
However, this came after a long and enthusiastic involvement in offshore racing and cruising. The international multi-nation Admiral’s Cup biennial series was at its height when he bought Fionnuala, and she soon became a stepping stone to the Swan 44 Assiduous, acquired early in 1974 for a steady build-up to becoming a mainstay of the competitive 1975 Irish team, which finished 7th out of 19 nations.
Crosshaven in the early summer of 1975. Although the first part of the Royal Cork YC marina had been built, facilities were still quite basic, and Otto Glaser’s McGruer 47 Tritsch-Tratsch II has to be dried out alongside the pier in the absence of a boat-hoist. Meanwhile, Archie O’Leary’s one year old Cork-built Holland Two Tonner Irish Mist II is lying to a swinging mooring (left), as is Clayton Love’s Swan 44 Assiduous (centre) and Denis Doyle’s Sparkman & Stephens-designed 47ft blue Moonduster (right). Photo: W M Nixon
CROSSHAVEN DEVELOPMENTAL HUB
But while Assiduous was a Sparkman & Stephens design production built –albeit to a rather special specification – in Finland, back home in Crosshaven a remarkable nexus of marine talent was developing with the likes of Ron Holland setting up his design studio in a former farmhouse in Currabinny with Butch Dalrymple-Smith in a central role, Johnny and Di McWilliam extending an ancient mill at Hodderstown above Crosshaven to become a world class sail-loft, and local talent in the form of the Bushe family of boatbuilders and Richard Leonard at the Denis Doyle-owned Crosshaven Boatyard ready and willing to create boats of world quality, as were the growing team at Barry Burke’s South Coast Boatyard further up Cork Harbour.
The first sign of this new state of affairs came in 1974 when Hugh Coveney’s totally Cork-created One Tonner Golden Apple became an international star, and soon after production of the Holland-designed Shamrock Class Half Tonners began to appear from Barry Burke’s South Coast Boatyard to go on to Harold Cudmore winning the Half Ton Worlds in 1976 with Silver Shamrock.
But meanwhile the Cork teams had also created Archie O’Leary’s Two Tonner Irish Mist, an extraordinarily potent performer, and thus the demand for the best of what Cork could create was already creating pressure, but Clayton Love Jnr came into this new game with the irresistible pressure of a high-powered well resourced three man syndicate of himself, Hugh Coveney, and Ray Fielding.
THE WONDER OF BIG APPLE
The result in 1977 was Big Apple, 44ft of what many still think was one of the greatest boats ever. At the time of her creation, the Holland studio was still transitioning from pintail sterns as seen on the Shamrocks and Irish Mist, but it wasn’t always an across-the -board change. However, the Young Turks in the Holland office managed to slip through a broader stern on what became one of their greatest designs, the eternal Imp for Skip Allen of San Francisco and now owned by George Radley Jnr of Cork, and back in the winter of 1976-77 they did the same for this new 44 footer for the Crosshaven trio.
The new and truly wonderful Big Apple newly launched from South Coast Boatyard in April 1977.
Big Apple may not have had her basic alloy hull built in Cork, but it was the next best thing as the bare hull of this, one of the greatest boats of all time, was built by Joyce Marine in Southampton, consisting of Irish brothers who brought incredible hull welding and fairing skills into a top position in the demanding international world of Solent boat-building. And once the hull was finished, she was completed by a team of all the talents back at South Coast Boatyard in Cork.
April 1977, and Big Apple with her new-style stern is making her debut at the RCYC pontoon with Harold Cudmore at the wheel. Photo: W M Nixon
Big Apple was an immediate star when she was brought down harbour to Crosshaven in April, and to do her justice a group of journalists was invited to Cork for a test sail. It was quite a party, for in those days Rob Humphreys – originally of Pwllheli – was still a sailing journalist rather than an international yacht designer, and with the acerbic Jack Knights also present, there was plenty of scope for disagreement, yet approval was universal, for this as one very special boat indeed.
Journos and jockeys having fun on a trial sail with Big Apple – Butch Dalrymple-Smyth on grinder, Rob Humphreys at left, Harold Cudmore beside him, and Jack Knights on the wheel. Photo: W M Nixon
BIG APPLE SWEEPS THE BOARD
And Big Apple – despite some setbacks which seem absurd to the point of disbelief in retrospect – was indeed the Boat of the Year, sweeping through Cowes Week with the accumulation of a raft of winning trophies including the Admirals Cup Concours d’Elegance, but in the Fastnet Race itself the overall spread of conditions suited 40-footers, and it was her little sister Imp that was the overall winner.
The star of the show – Big Apple sweeps the board in Cowes Week 1977 with Johnny McWilliam on wheel, Harold Cudmore beside him, Killia Bushe and Ron Holland on the rail, and outfits supplied by Pierre’s Petite Sailor Shop in St Malo.
BIG APPLE GOES EAST
It had been a very challenging business creating a boat of this calibre with so many creative and constructional talents involved with three owners, each accustomed to being his own boss, so a brief partnership had always been envisaged and Big Apple was soon sold to a Japanese owner.
Our last known photo of her was taken in Japan in 2008. But although she had two sister-ships in the form of Chris Dunning’s Marionettte (later Piet Vroon’s Formidable) and Fred Kinmonth’s Mandrake, it is Big Apple that is best remembered, arguably the peak achievement of an extraordinary time in Cork’s sailing development.
Last known sighting….Big Apple in Japan in 2008
Yet before the 1970s were out, there was an even more concerted challenge for the 1979 Admiral’s Cup, but this time Clayton Love and Hugh Coveney went for their own 44ft boats with the near sisters Silver Apple and Golden Apple respectively. Yet for some reason despite the success of Big Apple and Imp, this pair seemed to revert more to the pintail stern even though 1979 saw the immediate success of the Imp descendant, Ken Rohan’s Regardless.
After the success of Big Apple and Imp in 1977, it was surprising in 1979 to find that the sterns of Golden Apple (left, with Hugh Coveney on board) and Silver Apple (right, with Johnny McWilliam on board) seemed to have reverted back towards the pintail type. Yet in the stormy 1979 Fastnet Race, it is believed that Golden Apple was leading overall until her rudder shaft snapped off.
BOTH APPLES, BUT MADE DIFFERENTLY
But the two new Apples were built differently from each other, with Golden Apple better able to maintain a taut forestay, and with her crew including Harold Cudmore and Ron Holland himself. She was tuned to such an extent that she was reckoned to have been leading the Fastnet Race overall until her rudder shaft broke clean off in the tail end of the notorious Fastnet 1979 storm.
As for Silver Apple, she had failed to qualify for the Irish AC Team, so in time – for he was much involved with greater business through his energetic Presidency of the Cork Chamber of Commerce – had her stern broadened, and she re-appeared in 1981 as the dark purple Rebel County with mixed success.
But with the 1980s advancing, Clayton Love Jnr had other primary maritime interests, and none more so than the Lifeboat Institute. He had always thought that Crosshaven needed its own medium- range lifeboat station, and his successful campaigning for its establishment meant that at his funeral in Crosshaven on Monday March 4th, his coffin was draped with the RNLI ensign.
Ready for action - Crosshaven Lifeboat has its own special sense of community. Photo: Jon Mathers
However, his involvement with the RNLI son saw his oranisational talents being recognized, and he became such an effective Deputy Chairman of the entire body that his name was mentioned in prayers at Monday’s ceremony in Westminster Abbey in London to mark the 200ft Anniversary of the Lifeboat Service.
NEW LIFEBOAT STATION IN MAYO
One of the achievements that he was remembered for was the key role he played in the establishment of a major lifeboat station at Ballyglass on Broadhaven in the remote northwest corner of Mayo. There had been a huge gap in ocean-going coverage between the lifebat in Arranmore in Donegal and the lifeboat at Kilronan in the Aran Islands in Donegal, but the question was whether or not to establish a lifeboat at some sheltered port with a long maritime tradition, or else build a completely new lifeboat-serving culture at some remote place nearer the more dangerous parts of the coast.
To add to the available information, Clayton Love secured the use of a helicopter. As he was personally fearless, this sometimes challenging research along the west coast in often marginal weather is almost too vividly remembered by others involved, yet they also remember his total concentration on the job in hand rather than allowing the worst of the Atlantic weather to distract him, and the resulting creation of the Ballyglass station has resulted in some magnificent rescues.
The Mayo Lifeboat has to operate in some unusual situations, and cliff-climber rescue is as much a part of its activities as saving life at sea.
As he approached his 60s, Clayton’s thoughts were increasingly about a suitable boat for extended Mediterranean cruising for himself and Betty and their many friends and extending family, and he hit on the Nicholson 70, that fine ketch which emerged from the Camper & Nicholson office when the great Raymond Wall was chief designer.
AIMING FOR A NICHOLSON 70
He had first become aware of the type when Dounie Edwards – a descendant of that remarkable mini-colony of Welsh miners that was established, with some of them still speaking Welsh, in Chile in thr 19th Century – brought his new Nich 70 Gloriana to the ICC’s Golden Jubilee Cruise-in-Company in southwest Ireland in 1979, and in the end it was Gloriana that was selected. But when she re-emerged as Clayton’s new yacht, she’d become Royal Tara, a notably immaculate and efficiently-run cruising yacht that traversed the Mediterranean for years with an eclectic collection of Clayton and Betty Love’s family and friends aboard.
Outward bound. Clayton & Betty Love’s Nicholson 70 Royal Tara seen in May 1994 as she takes her departure from Spinalonga in northeast Crete, on passage to Rhodes. Photo: W M Nixon
That would have made for a fine swan-song for most sailors with such a diverse career, but Clayton Love’s enthusiasm and interest kept him going. For one as yet unfilled ambition was to find one of the old 1895 Fife-designed Cork Harbour One Designs, and have her restored by the unmatched talents of Duncan Walker at Fairlie Restorations on the Hamble for competition in the classic circuit on the Mediterranean.
FINDING A CHOD
By this time, surviving CHODs were few enough, and some had been converted to cruisers. Yet as it happened, I knew of one of the cruiser ones which had set out with high hopes for a voyage to the Mediterranean, but her crew had enough of the high seas by the time they got to Land’s End, so they peeled off into Falmouth and in time the boat was sold. When noticed for what she was, she was looking sorry for herself, hauled up on the foreshore of Falmouth Harbour near Truro, and with her rudder missing.
Lost and found. The 1898-built Cork Harbour OD Jap as she was on the foreshore in the upper reaches of Falmouth Harbour in 1994. Photo: W M Nixon
But her owner was traced, and though she was burdened with the name of Jap as she’d been built in 1898 in Carrigaloe at the height of the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta craze, the name was kept. Yet the 43ft Fife cutter building beside her had suffered even worse – she was called Yum Yum. But Jap she was and Jap she stayed right through the Duncan Walker restoration, even if the Yum Yum name had only lasted a couple of seasons for the other boat, until she went through a succession of names until she ended up in France known as the classic Pen Duick, owned by the Tabarly family.
HAPPY EXPERIENCE
For both Duncan Walker and Clayton Love, the restoration of Jap was a happy experience, such that Walker was moved to comment that the Corkman was the most pleasant customer he’d ever had to deal with. But then a lot of dreams were being filled, and many happy memories recalled. And when the job was done and Jap was taken to the Mediterranean in her own customized air-conditioned trailer with Donal McClement very much involved, they found themselves launched into several seasons during which people no longer noticed the odd name, but they did notice that Jap was winning many trophies with considerable style, and Clayton Love Jnr was having the time of his life.
The restored Jap racing to success in the Mediterranean Classics, with Clayton Love Jnr relaxed and content at the helm as his plans for the special boat achieve total fulfillment. This photo montage is taken from the magisterial 2005-published history of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, another project in which Clayton Love Jnr was involved.
That said, it was as he recovered from a certain inevitable sadness, for Betty had died after fifty extraordinary years together. They had been the essence of complementary with each other, but in turn that gave Clayton the strength to go on. And as his longtime sparring partner and sometime shipmate Liam McGonagle of Howth had died in 1998 - though not before he and his wife Barbara had enjoyed several cruises on Royal Tara with Clayton and Betty - in 2013 he married Barbara McGonagle, and the final chapter of his remarkable life began.
Barbara McGonagle – the first woman member of the Irish Cruising Club committee - at the helm of the 63ft S&S design War Baby off the coast of Chile in 1988. War Baby – owned by Warren Brown - was previously Ted Turner’s Tenacious, overall winner of the stormy 1979 Fastnet Race. Photo: John Gore-Grimes
But as Barbara was born a Massey of Howth, with a dedication to the peninsula and the Howth 17 class just as Clayton was dedicated to Crosshaven and the Cork Harbour OD, it was a partnership which needed some adjustment, and in time – with Clayton becoming less mobile - they found a compromise in a new beachside house, south-facing across Dublin Bay from the south shore of the Howth isthmus or tombola at Sutton, in a spot which had been recently been demonstrated by rainfall radar to be the driest place in all Ireland.
As Clayton said, it was ideal, as new motorways made Cork accessible yet kept it at a distance, while the view was extraordinary, across Dublin Bay to the Wicklow Hills sweeping up to the Sugarloaf, and changing all the time with the tides in Sutton Creek while he recorded the slow but steady increase in the colony of seals at the sandy north end of the Bull Island. And over to the left of his viewscape, it took very little making of the tide for the small boats to put out for racing and training from Sutton Dinghy Club, a place he knew well from years of interaction recorded in that unique trophy, The Book.
Jap is now returned to Crosshaven into the care and custody of the Roya Cork Yacht Club for all members’ use, and is seen here racing with obvious enjoyment in the Crosshaven Traditional and Classic Regatta. She is a particular joy to steer – note how little pressure is needed on the tiller. Photo: Robert Bateman
Quietly yet profoundly religious, he slipped into his 90s with grace, and now he is no longer with us. He has lived a great life, he leaves much behind him, and our deepest sympathies are with his very extended family and many genuinely close friends. His legacy is all about us, and while most of us knew him mainly as a key figure in Irish sailing and its development and success, it became clear, from a message posted on X by fellow-Corkman Micheal Martin, that he’d made a singular effect ashore almost independently of his sea life, as the Tanaiste said:
"Deeply saddened at the passing of Clayton Love Jr, who made an enormous contribution to Cork through his pioneering work in commerce and business. He was a Renaissance Man, well read, erudite, altruistic, and a patron of the arts with the public interest at heart".
Clayton Love retained a special affection for the IDRA 14 Class, and he is seen here at the class’s 70th Anniversary Regatta at Clontarf in 2016 with fellow IDRA 14 “seniors” Sean Flood (left) and Ian Sargent (right). Photo: W M Nixon
