Regardless of what place Ian Walker's team finishes the Boston-Galway transat on May 23, Green Dragon and the other Irish owned entry, Ger O'Rourke's Delta Lloyd, will be welcomed home with open arms.
When the VOR comes to Galway, a quarter of a million people are expected to watch the in-port race and the pro-am event in the Bay. It will be the first time the event has stopped over in Ireland, and the fleet will stay for two weeks.
Proving to the public – and the government – that this yachting event is a profitable exercise and not a decadent extreme will be its most important legacy, because it will demonstrate just how much Ireland's ports and harbours can contribute to economic growth.
By June 6 the music, the craic and festivities will have sailed away so Irish sailing needs to concentrate on taking all it can from the largest state investment in sailing ever made.
The Green Dragon has so far generated 15 million Euros worth of global media coverage, a figure ahead of all the other competing teams. 10,000 school children will get a change to go on board the boat in Galway docks as part of the biggest free festival ever staged here. The fact the celebrations are based around sailing will be a major boost to the sport.
The expertise that is expected to produce tourism revenues of 43 million Euro is vital not just to Galway, but to all Irish coastal towns because it offers employment possibilities at each one of this country’s 900 harbours.
Specialist skills have been gained in putting two race entries into the race and in organising the Galway stop-over. We must capture this knowledge before it, quite literally, sails off to distant shores. The knowledge must be shared not just among a small bunch of professionals sailors for whom the race has already been valuable but to a wider audience who can be motivated for future projects.
Immediately after the event, one of the biggest participant sporting events in the country kicks off on the east coast. The Galway focus will be on eight boats but Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta will have a fleet of 500 and 3,500 sailors afloat on Dublin Bay from July 9. It’s an indication of the size – and the potential - of the domestic sailing scene here. Racing will be provided in 25 classes and, with a steady influx of visitors from across the Irish sea area, it could be worth up to 10 million Euro to the local economy.
These are all positive reasons why the government needs to look more closely at our coastline as a means of providing employment. Irish sailing is punching above its weight, generating 50 million euro in tourism revenues this year from these two events alone. Sailing is a unique model because it combines mass spectator appeal with a thriving
domestic scene and, in this climate, that’s a miracle from the sea.
This is especially so because the sport is doing this against the odds. How can Ireland hope to exploit such high yield tourism without basic marine infrastructure, such as berths for boats? There are more berths in north Wales, for example, than there are around our entire coast.
Take Galway for instance, it took the arrival of the Volvo 70 fleet to prompt a 25 berth marina there. Sail away from this modest pontoon and there is only two other facilities on the entire western seaboard, Ireland's beautiful but very inaccessible 300 mile stretch of
Coast.
Spokesmen for our sport can help by making make sound bytes for exploring a set of marine projects. For example think of the Dell Plant in Limerick, the cost to the exchequer of each of those 1,000 or so jobs and the ease with
which they left Ireland. For a similar investment we could have developed 1,000 marine leisure jobs that would stick to Ireland like limpets because this is where their natural advantage would exist.
These employers would be in activity tourism and niche manufacturing and services but not in old style hunter/gatherer lifestyles i.e. inshore or sea fishing. Some of the projects would bring balanced regional development to the Atlantic coast.
For example, a small sailmaking firm was set up in Crosshaven in 1974. It's still there and it’s a thriving small business that designs and exports sails all over the world. Government agencies would do well to engage with boating organisations to make more of this happen. The Irish may not be leading the round the world race, but there are plenty of victories to be had on our shoreline.
