“The Freedom of the Seas” is a grand hifalutin notion altogether, particularly when you try to explain the special joys of cruising to a sailing enthusiast who can only measure pleasure afloat through successful racing results. But as the exchanges of information at last night’s Annual General Meeting of the 1929-founded Irish Cruising Club in Dun Laoghaire’s National Yacht Club tended to agree, the Freedom of the Seas has its limits when a worldwide pandemic is creating different barriers and restrictions under the various legislatures that are controlling the shores at those distant places you hope to visit at the end of a freedom-loving voyage.
For although the lone boats sailing the high seas and flying the ICC burgee will frequently be doing so without another boat in sight for days on end, when they do get to port their first thoughts will include plans of socialising with like-minded souls. But with social-distancing or indeed total non-meeting regulations in place ashore at various times during the past two years, successful clubs – for all their venerable history in many Irish cases – have had to display a youthful flair for innovative thought and nimble action in order to continue functioning in some meaningful way.
Thus while Honorary Editor Maire Breathnach of Dungarvan has continued to produce the much-admired ICC Annual on time despite the changing scenario of permitted activity, the club has now reached the stage that if some members never hear the word Zoom again, it will be too soon. The lack of straightforward personal gatherings - afloat during the summer, and ashore during the winter - had become irksome, and even with activity returning, the fact is that those who were serving the club in the various officer roles were necessarily doing so like people with one arm tied behind their backs.
The ICC Foredeck Quintet at work on composing their latest piece, “The Sea Air”, on board Mick Brogan’s Galway Hooker Mac Duach, while also providing an appropriate cover for the latest ICC Annual. Photo: Micheal McLoughlin
It simply wasn’t fair to those devoting their time and energy in the key positions, so at last year’s totally on-line AGM, former Commodore Stanton Adair of Belfast Lough proposed that, as far as “officer churn” was concerned, 2020 simply would not exist in terms of ICC positional rotation. It was a brilliant idea of breath-taking simplicity, and it means that popular current Commodore David Beattie of Lough Ree and Dun Laoghaire and his supporting officers will have an extra year of normal sociable activity to compensate for the two years in which they have gallantly given of their enthusiasm, despite functioning in effect behind a screen, while jumping hurdles at the same time.
CRUISING CONTINUED FOR THOSE PREPARED TO NEGOTIATE THE RESTRICTIONS
But although the structured clubbable activities have been a no-go for a couple of years now, cruising has continued for those prepared to negotiate the various regulations and constricted means of travel, as was revealed in the adjudication on the various ICC awards delivered last night by highly-experienced cruising skipper John Duggan, originally of Malahide but now Portuguese-based and renowned for his stylish cruises to the Azores and round Biscay from his Cascais base.
The special and often challenging circumstances of cruising in 2021 are underlined by his award of the Round Ireland Cup - one of the club’s defining trophies - to Ed Wheeler of Strangford Lough. Ed made an entertaining circuit – some of it single-handed - in the robust Contessa 35 Witchcraft, but the title of his winning log says just about everything about cruising in home waters in 2021 that needed to be said – it is titled “Round Ireland With the Pubs Shut”.
Thirsty work. The Doug Peterson-designed Contessa 35 Witchcraft conveyed Ed Wheeler on an award-winning circuit of Ireland, but failed to find a single open pub. Photo: Kevin Dwyer
On a more serious note, two of the premier trophies – the senior award of the 1931-inaugurated Faulkner Cup, and the self-explaining Atlantic Cup for ocean voyaging, go to Rob Henshall of Fermanagh. He has extraordinary seagoing credentials, for in the early 1990s he went round Ireland twice totally unaccompanied on firstly, a Bic windsurfer, and then secondly, a year or two later, in a Laser.
TAKING CHANCES ON MARITIME BARGAINS
In a subsequent year, when the US dollar was down through the floor, he reckoned it was his economic duty to nip across to America and buy a hefty big bargain-basement ketch. In order to maintain the frugal nature of the enterprise, he then had to sail his new ship back to Ireland immediately despite it being Autumn with the last of the hurricanes still rumbling about, but he did the job with exemplary efficiency single-handed.
However, in 2021 his luck ran out, for although he’d sensibly down-sized to the well-maintained vintage Contessa 32 Maria based in Portimao in southern Portugal, a rough homeward voyage via the Azores revealed a potential weakness known to some Contessa 32 owners. In the manner of the time in which they were built, the shroud-supporting chainplates of the Contessa 32 simply consist of some hefty stainless steel rod bent into a “U” shape and threaded at each end in order to facilitate easy installation through the reinforced deck abeam of the mast.
The very fact of creating the U-bend weakens the steel, but the overweight nature of the fitting is intended to compensate for this. Yet high quality stainless steel can further hide any hidden weakness and developing fatigue simply by being shiny and cleaning up well. The result of all this in Maria’s case was that the chainplate supporting the port-side cap shroud simply gave way at the apex of its curve while Maria was bashing into heavy winds while still at some distance from Ireland. The mast came down, and after Rob had failed – after much exhausting effort - to get the engine to re-start when he’d had to re-fill the fuel tank in heavy seas, he’d to make a mobile phone call to get a tow into Courtmacsherry.
You win some, you lose some. But when the wheels come off, Courtmacsherry is a good place to be
“Courtmac” is one of those places where the whole village seems to turn out to aid distressed mariners in the most understanding ways possible. Consequently, Rob Henshall was inspired to write a heartfelt and sometimes painfully honest account of his experiences, and he has done so in such a way that he receives both the Faulkner Cup for best log and the Atlantic Cup for an ocean voyage.
MAKING MOLEHILLS OUT OF MOUNTAINS
Nevertheless the “Maria event” is not something which anyone would want to experience personally, but the Irish Cruising Club is renowned for the variety of its activities, and if it’s a sense of enjoyment and achievement which you want to savour, then the intrepid Paddy Barry provides it with his account of an island-hopping and mountain climbing expedition to the islands and remoter areas of Scotland, places where regulations were different to Ireland, and anyway officialdom was seldom to be found.
“The Conor O’Brien Of Our Times” – the ever-enthusiastic Paddy Barry continues to sail the seas and climb the mountains a very long time after being awarded the Free Bus Pass.
“Time was when you’d have this place to yourself”. The veteran ketch Iroise with company in Village Bay, St Kilda. Photo: Paddy Barry
With his mountaineering and voyaging, Paddy Barry is the Conor O’Brien of our times, but despite the fact that he has now long outlived O’Brien, he is still at it. In 2021 he availed of his partnership interest in the curious French-built ketch Iroise – an Irish-based relic of the early days of Glenans in West Cork – and took off for an award-winning and energetic programme which took in St Kilda and the Orkneys. Admittedly they did find themselves returning south via the civilized route of the Caledonian Canal, but the rugged theme of the venture was maintained, for when they found themselves berthed in the canal beside Ben Nevis, they just had to climb the great big thing to add to many other peaks achieved.
MIS-BUILDING NUCLEAR SUBS IN BARROW
Other noted long-distance cruisers making the best of changing regulations included Annual editor Maire Breathnach and husband Andrew Wilkes, who were awarded the Fingal Cup for the log the adjudicator most enjoyed with their mighty 64ft gaff cutter Annabel J.
Having already been forced to spend one entire season confined to the Canary Islands (where Andrew passed the time by restoring an abandoned Nicholson 43), they came back north to work their way under sail through changing vax requirements in Britain and Ireland, such that at one stage – while bound for Kircudbright in southwest Scotland - they found themselves anchored off Piel Island near the super-secret nuclear submarine-building port of Barrow-in-Furness under the Cumbrian Mountains of England’s Lake District.
A haven of sanity beside the nuclear madness of Barrow-in-Furness – Piel Island off the coast of Cumbria
That the first recorded ICC visit to peculiar Piel Island should be made by a massive gaff cutter of deep draft like Annabel J is all of a piece with ICC activity in 2021. But then Piel, in particular, is bound to be peculiar, as Barrow-in-Furness is one decidedly odd place.
Perhaps it’s in line with the intention to keep it hyper-secret, but they build the various bits and pieces of the nuclear submarines in different compartmentalised areas of the yard, and then assemble them in one uber-secret main workshop. Thus in 1988 in that ultimate workshop, they managed to add and firmly attach an entire hull section of a new nuclear submarine upside-down. No wonder the damn things cost so much…..
THE NEW PUB ON RATHLIN ISLAND
Such is the charm of the ICC Annual that it provides entertainment in itself, and leads on to other thoughts. Thus one of the pleasantest logs is by noted Dun Laoghaire sailor Dick Lovegrove, who admits he was somewhat nervous in resuming cruising with his successfully-raced Sigma 33 Rupert. So to make sure all the bits and pieces – both boat and crew - were still working properly after a two-year layoff, he made do with a modest venture to Rathlin Island from Dublin Bay, thereby taking advantage of less stringent regulations in the north.
Rathlin Island makes for a perfect destination, as it’s definitely very much an island, yet the harbour with its marina is much improved over the primitive shallow berthing of times past, while the pub is now palatial by comparison with the tiny place familiar to anyone visiting Rathlin three decades ago.
Rathlin Island – renowned for its replacing of licensed premises…
Back in the day when the new pub was being built, the Irish Lights Commissioners made their annual visit, as Rathlin has three very important lighthouses. After they’d made their inspection and their launch was quietly pulling away from the pier, Commissioner Patrick Jameson made a final attempt at conversation with a typically taciturn islander up on the pier:
“I say” called Patrick, “what’s that building going up over there?”
“It’s the new pub”.
“Oh really. That’s absolutely fascinating. And what happened to the old pub?”
“It got wore out”.
ICC AWARDS 2021:
- Faulkner Cup & Atlantic Cup: Rob Henshall (Maria, Contessa 32)
- Strangford Cup: Daragh Nagle (Canadian-based, British Columbia cruise with Moody 376 Chantey V).
- Round Ireland Cup: Ed Wheeler, Contessa 35 Witchcraft
- Fingal Cup: Maire Breathnach (Annabel J, 64ft gaff cutter)
- Wybrant Cup: Paddy Barry (Iroise, vintage ketch)
- Wild Goose Cup (log of literary merit): Bob Fannin Jnr (Nich 31 Capa III, Netherlands to Dun Laoghaire)
- Marie Trophy (under 30ft LOA): Conor O’Byrne (Galway to West Coast Scotland in Sadler 26.
- Glengarriff Trophy (cruising in Ireland): Jim O’Meara, Jeanneau 37 Second Chance
- Perry Greer Bowl (First log by new member): Vincent Guenebaut, Cork to Connemara in Oceanis 321
- John B Kearney Cup for Services to Sailing: Hal Sisk for numerous world-standard restoration projects
Hal Sisk on Dublin Bay aboard the 36ft 1894 cutter Peggy Bawn, one of his many successful restoration projects, back in 2003 when the Jeanie Johnston still occasionally put to sea under sail. Photo: W M Nixon
