Liam Shanahan Senr was widely known in the sailing community as a determined offshore racing and cruising owner-skipper and a pillar of the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, both as a longtime Club Trustee and a racing and sea-going achiever. He and his family regularly added to the club’s annual haul of significant trophies won locally, nationally and internationally. And he did this through sailing skills started while working abroad, and then honed in Dublin Bay racing, ISORA competition, and offshore majors such as the Dun Laoghaire to Dingle and Round Ireland races.

He was the personification of success achieved through shrewd career choices, a willingness to travel to further his work objectives, an ability to work very hard indeed, and a determination that - in time - he and his growing family’s remarkable life would be firmly Ireland-centric.

He was representative of the best of modern Ireland, as he was of that generation of specialised qualifications which had to accept that a period working internationally – and working with exceptional concentration wherever he found himself with a project in hand – would be required in order to fulfil his long-term ambition of living comfortably beside Dublin Bay in a permanent family home and running his own high-powered international business from a South Dublin office complex.

A SENSE OF SOMEONE SPECIAL

Consequently, for those of us who didn’t get to know him until he started to make his mark on the ISORA scene in the 1970s, there was inevitably a slight sense of the lone wolf about Liam. It was a very positive thing, but there was this inescapable awareness of a canny and determined eye on the distant horizon, and a willingness to take unorthodox action.

Liam Shanahan reflecting on a life well lived. His achievements were very typical of success in modern Ireland. Photo: Shanahan family

Thus, in one Round Ireland race, he memorably broke away from a closely competing group off the Antrim coast, and sailed what seemed to be a slower course to the southwest while the rest of us stayed in a sou’easter on the direct line for the next turning mark at Mew Island. And sure enough, a new brisker sou’wester came slowly, seemingly out of nowhere, and Liam was well in it and gone almost an hour before anyone else felt its benefits - we didn’t see him again until Wicklow Harbour.

Yet once the business of racing was done, he could emerge – perhaps from some global business telephone communication session – and be the life and soul of the party, leavened with a wicked sense of humour as we memorably discovered after the 1995 Dun Laoghaire-Dingle Race, before the official celebrations had swung into action.

DEATH OF FATHER WHEN HE WAS AGED FOUR

This left us in no doubt that Liam Shanahan operated successfully at several levels, some of them unknown to most people. Fundamental to it all was his devotion to family. But it was equally clear that supporting every level of his complex character profile was a personal core of the toughest steel. We get an insight into one of the reasons for this with the knowledge that his own father died in 1934, when he was just four. Yet his widowed mother was able to put him through university thanks to his own willingness to work at any summer job that came along in the tough environment of Dublin docks.

Today, working to help support your way through college is a familiar rite of passage. But in the closed world of 1940s-1950s Dublin, it tended to set you apart. However, in Liam Shanahan’s special case, he had the personality and zest for life to enjoy university life with the same ease as those who were feather-bedding their way through college.

Family, friends, and sailing in Dublin Bay – all something to be achieved and cherished. Liam Shanahan in his 90s aboard the Oyster 625 Ruth II. Photo: Liam Shanahan Jnr

When such an interesting man has reached the age of 93 at the time he goes from among us, there is so much to his very fulfilled life that we can only really begin to realise just how remarkable he was through insights from his family. Afloat.ie is grateful to his sons Liam Jnr and Jack for these memories about someone who made a local, national and international impact in every activity with which he became involved.

LIAM SHANAHAN JNR (SAILOR OF THE YEAR 2015) REMEMBERS HIS FATHER

“He was born In Dublin on 31 August 1930 and educated at O’Connell’s School (Christian Brothers), which he disliked intensely. But the climate of Third Level education suited him well, and he revelled in the degree course in Mechanical & Electrical Engineering at University College Dublin, which he loved completely.

However, it was more the fun bit of college rather than the academic side that attracted him, although there’s no doubt he was smart with his studies. His first contact with the sea probably came with his UCD holiday jobs, as he faced the special challenge of working as a summer dockhand in Dublin Port. In that notably tough environment, he stood his ground strongly enough to have the friendly nickname of “Silver”, as in Long John Silver of the novel Treasure Island, for he was conspicuously tall and skinny.

The family’s first sailing boat was a Penguin Dinghy in New Jersey in the late 1960s, when Liam was working with GE in New York

He was always interested in boating – and getting out on the sea. He told us that when younger and working as an electrical engineer in Peru, he used to dawn-fish, just beyond the Pacific breakers off Lima , and when living in Venezuela, night-fish with the locals on Lake Maracaibo .

START WITH ESB

Before these jobs abroad, my father had initially worked at the nation’s Electricity Supply Board after graduating from UCD with his degree in Mech/Elec Engineering. But while a secure semi-government ESB position would have been the height of many of his contemporaries’ dreams, my father was one of those who realised that the Ireland of the 1950s was a place of small horizons, low industrial innovation and activity, and even lower salaries when a salaried job could be secured at all.

He left Ireland to work for General Electric in the Unites States, with his first international assignment for the company being to the desert in Saudi Arabia, living in a tent among the Bedouins as a young commissioning engineer on a major power plant GE had been contracted to install.

PERIPATETIC EARLY MARRIED LIFE

He maintained the closest links with Ireland, and with the Saudi project successfully completed, on his way back to the US he arranged to meet my mother Emir in Amsterdam, where they got engaged. She was working as a trainee nurse at the time, in the Richmond Hospital in Dublin. After their marriage, when he was working with General Electric in the US, my parent’s first home was in Schenectady in New York State, and the next in New York City.

Their first posting overseas as a young couple (my mother was just 21) was to post-war Japan, where GE were deeply involved in rebuilding the power generation infrastructure. When my mother became pregnant, she flew to Ireland to have the first of their children, as at that time, medical care in Japan was still rudimentary. She holds a certificate from Air France for being one of the first women to fly the newly opened route over the North Pole from Japan to Europe.

JAPAN TO SOUTH AMERICA

Once their Japanese assignment was over, they went on to live in Venezuela, Colombia (where three further children were born), then in Peru and Trinidad before heading back to the US with my father working in Manhattan, and the family living in the suburbs at Ridgewood, New Jersey, where the last and final child Jack was born.

When we lived in New Jersey, my father was introduced to sailing by Dave Jones, his former boss in South America. My father crewed for Dave on his Olympic Star on Saturday club racing, and at the occasional local championship event. Dave was an old school lake-sailor, and a very authoritarian skipper…….my father learned well.

THE FIRST FAMILY BOAT

Our first Shanahan family boat in New Jersey was a dinghy - a una-rigged Penguin - sailed always with some combination of the family as crew. These sailing days in the Penguin quickly became only occasional outings, as my father was by now extremely busy at work, and for a while sailing fell into the background . He would have been 40 years old at the time, and my mother around 33.

In 1972, my father relocated from the US to Ireland with GE, which fitted precisely with his longterm plan of having his own Ireland-based international consultancy and engineering project management company. So though he continued to travel extensively around the world, it was now from an Irish base, and he intended to keep it that way.

MERMAID IN IRELAND WAS HECTIC LEARNING EXPERIENCE

His first boat in Ireland was a 17ft Mermaid, which he bought after a rapid and decisive half hour research chat in the bar of the National Yacht Club with the vendor, the late Ronnie Finlay Mulligan. She was Nicola – sail number 120. It was wild sailing with him in those days – this was in the time when the courses were frequently down through Dalkey Sound and back, with all which that entailed.

Back in Ireland, and starting to get to grips with sailing in the early 1970s with Nicola of the Mermaid Class in the foreground, and learning fast. Photo: Shanahan family

It was huge fun, but sometimes very terrifying for his young crew – we didn’t really know what we were doing. He entered our first regatta a few short weeks after he bought the boat - the Mermaid Nationals in Skerries. The wind howled as I remember, and no one else was flying spinnakers. But that didn’t matter, my father figured we had to find out what would happen, and there was only one way to do it. That was my first (but not last ) completely wild sea sleigh ride with him, and it seemed to take us forever to figure out how to get the thing down, but we lived to sail again and again.

OFFSHORE RACING TAKES CENTRE STAGE

After several years racing the Mermaid and attending most of the events around the country, he purchased a new Ron Holland-designed Shamrock Half Tonner he named Emircedes from South Coast Boatyard in Cork in 1979. This was an IOR-rated boat, and together with similarly-sized boats such as Brendan Briscoe’s Avanti, Peter Cullen’s Eliminator, Jim Poole’s Feanor, Tony Farrell's Crystal Clear and Paddy Kirwan’s Boomerang, our horizons rapidly broadened, and we raced Dublin Bay, ISORA, and campaigns such as the Round Ireland and the Fastnet.

Hectic Half Ton days, inshore and off. Brendan Briscoe’s Club Shamrock Avanti was a frequent contender with the Shanahan family’s sister-ship Emircedes. Photo: Shanahan family

He always had a young family-oriented crew – my sister Sarah was the youngest participant in the completely wild 1982 Round Ireland race at the time – that year, it seemed to dominated by very cold near-gale nor’easters. Because my father was still travelling so much for work, he insisted that the boat be sailed with the young crew stepping up to the mark if needs be in his absence, and as a result we all learned the offshore game at an early age.

The Superstar – the all-conquering db2s Lightning. Photo: Shanahan family

LIGHTNING LIVES UP TO HER NAME

His appetite whetted for the hottest competition, he sold Emircedes to the Horgan family - with whom the young Peter Ryan was to find much of his offshore racing experience - and bought Lightning, the already success-laden DB2s, from Leslie Kertez. He made her even more successful in ISORA and the Round Ireland races especially, coming second overall to Michael Boyd’s J/35 Big Ears in the Ireland circuit in 1986, and then first in 1988.

“We did it!” – Liam and his Round Ireland crew in Wicklow immediately after winning the 1988 Round Ireland Race (left to right) Tom Carroll, John O'Connor, Liam Shanahan Snr, Adam Winkelmann, Michael Horgan Jnr and Johnny Treanor

This was a true peak of achievement that was much celebrated, particularly in the National Yacht Club. So having achieved it, he began to think in terms of having a cruiser-racer which could really cruise as well as turning in an acceptable offshore racing performance, and reached this target with the acquisition of the Sigma 41 Sarah Mercedes in 1990.

With this comfortable bigger boat, he could be reasonably competitive in the Round Ireland race, and could also be an enthusiastic supporter of the National YC’s biennial Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race after it was inaugurated in 1993. But by Dingle Race’s positioning of the boat in West Kerry, he could then renew his profound pleasure in cruising comfortably along the Irish coast in detail.

A more formal reception for the winning Round Ireland crew of 1988 back to the National YC, with Liam at centre and Malachy Muldoon, Aidan Tarbett, John O'Connor, Cormac Kelly, Simon Digby, Johnny Treanor, Aidan Tarbett, Adam Winkelmann and Brian Barry

TOTAL CRUISING ORIENTATION

Then, having achieved all his racing goals, he decided to take a more sedate approach to sailing, purchasing a Beneteau 34 that he sailed along the Intra Coastal waterway in the US and through the Bahamas for a few years. This was followed by a Dun Laoghaire-based Beneteau 47, which he cruised extensively around the coasts of Ireland and France. And in his later years, he down-sized with a Beneteau 38 in which he enjoyed getting out on the bay, even doing the odd race in DBSC White Sails division.

A little bit of white sail racing in his 80s with the DBSC fleet.

The last few times we sailed together were on my own boat Ruth II, an Oyster 625. In 2018, and then again in 2021 and now with him into his 90s, he sailed with me from Dun Laoghaire to Kinsale and Greystones to Dunmore East and up to Waterford – these were the first legs of two Atlantic crossings in that boat, and he very much enjoyed being at the centre of it all.

FAMILY’S LEGACY OF A LOVE OF SAILING

My father has left us an enduring and hugely important sailing legacy. All of his adult children and grandchildren have taken his early beginnings in the Penguin dinghy in 1971 through to a deep and extensively active involvement in many aspects of the sport. His grandson Max, his daughter Sarah’s son, is a former British and Irish Optimist champion who lives and works in London, and as I write this weekend, he is sailing as tactician in the US for a boat out of the New York Yacht Club.

His other grandchildren have sailed extensively inshore and offshore on my own family’s J109 Ruth, all have worked as sailing instructors in Ireland and the US, and they have sailed across oceans on Ruth II.

His eldest son Paddy sails with his family in Dublin and cruises West Cork extensively, while his youngest son Jack has a boat in Dun Laoghaire, and is a member of the Dun Laoghaire RNLI. Finally, his eldest grandson Ben has recently bought a half share in venerable (1984 ) Sigma 31 which he keeps in the Beaulieu river in the Solent, and will enter in her first two-handed race next week.

Sailing was his greatest gift to us all”.

Liam Shanahan 8/10/23

JACK SHANAHAN’S RECOLLECTIONS

“Dad Loved Sailing,

He loved the science behind how the sails worked the mechanics of how a boat worked, but most of all, he loved the natural beauty of the sea, and the perspective it gave you of the land beside it.

Having spent most of his life travelling to distant corners of the world for work, there was nothing he loved more than coming home and going for a sail in Dublin Bay with his family and friends.

Seeking to develop a hobby that he could enjoy together with his family, Dad wandered into the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, looking to buy a boat. After friendly pints with someone who convinced him they had the perfect boat for sailing AND fishing, he bought “Nicola”, a Dublin Bay Mermaid. So began the obsession with the sea, and catching the guy in front.

While Dublin Bay was Liam Shanahan’s very special place, it was West Cork (above) which most strongly drew him in when he went cruising

WEST CORK THE HAPPY PLACE

The most valuable aspect of sailing for Dad was the freedom, that disconnection from the land and its hustle and bustle. A favourite family holiday was to head down to West Cork and cruise along from village to village, often in the company of other boats from Dun Laoghaire, sailing from regatta to regatta. Dad loved the thrill of a race together with the fun of after parties and sing-songs on boats. Above all, he particularly liked cruising along the coast of West Cork, and had a vast knowledge of all the landmarks and history behind them.

INTRODUCING OTHERS TO SAILING

A constant element of sailing with Dad was having people new to sailing on board. He loved teaching people how and why the sails worked, how to read a chart, what the nautical terms were and why they are used. He took pleasure in demystifying sailing and enjoyed opening the horizons for the many people who took up sailing after a spell with Dad.

That all makes him sound Like the Mary Poppins of sailing. Though it is all true, he was also very much the Captain of the boat, particularly when racing. Many stories that people have retold about sailing with Dad are often laced with strong language, hilarity and panic! His overriding priority was safety at sea, and if he felt someone was putting themselves or the boat in danger, he would correct the situation quickly and firmly with words he probably picked up working on the docks in his youth.

In racing, Dad was super competitive, he raced to win every time he went out. He admired his competitors, preferably from in front of them. In particular, Dad favoured the amateur racer, in the Round Ireland races of ’86 and ’88, he was especially pleased that it was amateur boats and crews that had won ahead of high-end professional crews on sponsored boats. And the Dublin to Dingle race became a favourite of his, as it encapsulated everything he loved, amateur racers and a trip along the Irish coast to Kerry.

When it came to the promotion of the sport as a whole, Dad became very involved in his own club and area, the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. Over his time there, he and his fellow members pushed for greater inclusion of Junior sailors with improved facilities and a more open, family-friendly direction in general.

PROMOTING AND PRESERVING DUBLIN BAY AND DUN LAOGHAIRE

Greater inclusion in sailing and boating as a whole was something he felt very strongly about, he believed that the sea, in particular Dublin Bay, should be open and accessible for anyone wishing to enjoy it and that the bay was something that needed to be protected from over-development and conserved as a natural resource for all to enjoy.

When he could no longer sail himself, Dad took immense pleasure in following the adventures of his children and grandchildren in their sailing exploits far and wide. Some were long cruising trips, some were hard-fought races, but either way, they all had one thing in common: his family enjoying a sport and a hobby that had something for everyone and brought them all together.”

Jack Shanahan 7/10/23

A FAMILY CENTRAL TO IRISH SAILING

Liam Shanahan Senr became the firm yet kindly and inspirational patriarch of a family which typifies all that is best in Irish sailing. Yet another peak of Shanahan achievement was reached in 2015 when his son Liam Jnr and the largely-family-sailed J/109 Ruth were overall winners in the very hotly-contested Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race, an achievement which – when combined with his other success in that year, made him “Sailor of the Year” for 2015.

Liam Shanahan Jnr on helm with shipmate Kevin Daly aboard the J/109 Ruth in the 2015 Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race, with the finish and first place in sight, and “Sailor of the Year 2015” on the horizon.

At the same time, Liam Senr was ever more determined in his efforts on behalf of the preservation of Dublin Bay and Dun Laoghaire Harbour. His appreciation of this unique city resource was heightened by how much it had meant to him – on his returns from work abroad - to be able to go sailing with family and friends in an easily-accessed, very attractive and relatively unspoilt place within convenient distance of home.

Ninety years of fascination with boats and sailing aboard the Oyster 625 Ruth in Dunmore East in 2021. Photo: Liam Shanahan Jnr

REMEMBERING LIAM SHANAHAN WITH THE PRESERVATION OF DUBLIN BAY AND DUN LAOGHAIRE HARBOUR

While the legacy of his family’s involvement in sailing continues stronger than ever, we could also best remember this remarkable man by ensuring the proper conservation of the sailing waters and harbour environment, which meant so much to him. Meanwhile, our heartfelt condolences are with his extended family and his very many shipmates and friends at home and abroad.

WMN

“And all I ask is a Tall Ship……” Liam in recent years in his “very special place”, sailing in Dublin Bay with Dun Laoghaire harbour astern and a very appropriate scene-stealer in Ruth II’s wake. Photo: Liam Shanahan Jnr