When you sail west past Mizen Head in the deep south, or Malin Head in the far north, you know you’re getting into the real Atlantic territory, where they do things differently afloat and ashore. For although the hundreds of boats competing in July 22’s RORC Fastnet Race from Cowes in 2023 will assume that they’ve savoured something of this specially challenging maritime frontier as they round the rock, it is those that have already competed in the National YC’s biennial Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race next year on June 7th who’ll know that the Fastnet Rock is just the rather spectacular gatepost for even more impressive sailing waters further west.
Thus it’s not until you’re sailing in and among and through and around the Blasket Islands – as competitors were doing in last May’s inaugural staging of Kinsale YC’s Inishtearaght Race, won in style by Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt in the Sun Fast 3300 Cinnamon Girl of the host club – that you become fully aware that this is somewhere utterly different about the Atlantic seaboard, and the further north you go, the more impressive it can become.
Approaching the turn. For the hundreds of competitors in the RORC Fastnet Race, the Fastnet Rock is as far west as they get in approaching Europe’s real Atlantic frontier…….Photo: RORC
…..but for Cian McCarthy’s Cinnamon Girl (KYC), winner of the first Kinsale YC Inishtearaght Race in 2022, the Fastnet was just one of the staging posts in a spectacular course. Photo: Robert Bateman
SHELTERED SCENIC SAILING WATERS
Yet between the great rugged outcrops, there are extensive areas of scenic sheltered sailing water providing quality sailing without extreme seafaring conditions. So inevitably, as Ireland’s prosperity has spread slowly westward, recreational sailing in more modern craft has developed to thrive side-by-side with the long-established racing of the local lines in traditional boats.
This has resulted in sailing clubs with a genuine local emphasis becoming healthily established, as opposed to the familiar “summer visitor sailing club”. One rough and ready way of identifying the summer visitor club is that it’s the one which holds its AGM during ’Twixtmas, that limbo time between Stephen’s Day and New Year’s Day, when members will have retreated from the sheer weight of endless festivities at the main home base, and are just in the mood for a spot of business-like matters on the morning of New Year’s Eve in their holiday club.
The West’s Awake. Flying Fifteens in strength at Carraroe in Connemara Photo: Maria Ui Bhrian
The genuinely local club, on the other hand, can hold its AGM about ten days before Christmas like clubs elsewhere, or even in the more anciently traditional April period. Either way, there’s no doubting the spread of clubs in new areas, with a good example being the formerly very workaday and TradBoat-minded Carraroe in Connemara. There, they now have a veritable rash of Flying Fifteens racing regularly to such good effect that Connemara’s Niall O’Brien and Ronan O’Brien won the FF Southerns at Dunmore East in August, they logged third in the Nationals at Dublin Bay in September, and then - slightly nearer home - they won the FFs in the 2022 Freshwater OD Keelboat Regatta in October with Lough Derg YC.
LONG DISTANCES MEAN LOCAL ISOLATION
Nevertheless, distances along the west coast are so great – and the passages between the popular sailing areas sometimes so oceanically challenging – that each little focal point of sailing can easily find itself tending to function in isolation, such that its annual programme can be arranged without any thought of interacting with the programmes of other clubs further along the coast.
This is certainly the case with inshore keelboat classes, and even with trailerable dinghy classes. But the cruiser-racer brigade inevitably feel that they should be co-ordinating with similar groups nearby, and while the West of Ireland Offshore Racing Association sees its remit as extending from Rathlin O’Beirne in Donegal south all the way to the Blasket Islands, within that area the Northwest Group extending from Sligo through Mullaghmore to Killybegs and maybe even Teelin has its own sense of cohesion. Clew Bay meanwhile is so extensive with its many private anchorages in addition to the main base with Mayo SC at Rosmoney that it’s a world of its own, while Galway Bay to the south is the same, only more so.
Summer evening racing at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. Photo: Discover Ireland
Further south, the Shannon Estuary is a universe, while areas south of the Blaskets may look to the glamour sailing area of West Cork as soon and as readily as they’d think to look north.
All this is in addition to the time-honoured local neighbourhood regattas, with their additional traditional boat and coastal rowing input, which are mostly in August – and mostly in the first weekend of August at that – though a more modern peak, built up during the past 40 years, is reached with the tide-dictated Cruinniu na mBad at Kinvara, which in 2023 is 11th to 13th August.
Yet if it’s the 24 carat pure gold Galway Bay tradboat experience that you seek, then the only immutable fixture is the 16th July, Mac Dara’s Day at the island of the saint’s name seaward of Roundstone. This is the very essence of traditional sail in the west and its interaction with just about every spiritual, maritime and cultural aspect of Connemara. And though July 16th 2023 happens to be a Sunday, that’s purely coincidental – Mac Dara’s Day is marked with the same fervour regardless of the day of the week.
A sense of anticipation – and a beautifully-setting mainsail….Having stowed her staysail, this handsome Galway Hooker is approaching the pier at Kinvara at the head of Galway Bay as the annual Cruinniu na mBad gets under way. Photo CnB
However, not all dates in western sailing are set in stone in the same sacred way - theoretically there’s, initially, an element of fixture choice for newer events. So when we talk of the west sailing to its own wild tunes and rhythms regardless of other main sailing centres, sometimes the reality seems to be that we’re looking at is conflicting tunes and competitive rhythms clashing both nationally and locally on a majestic seaboard where the shared hymn sheet is only in its infancy.
WIORA CHAMPS AT ARAN ISLANDS TO CLASH WITH VOLVO DUN LAOGHAIRE REGATTA
Back in 2017, a magic new location was added to Ireland’s pattern of regattas venues when Kilronan in the Aran Islands was temporarily fitted with marina pontoons, and from July 5th to 8th, it brilliantly hosted the 43-strong fleet in the 2017 WIORA Championship.
With such a unique venue, it would have been reasonable to expect easily-trailered cruiser-racers from other areas – notably the U25 J/24s – to want to attend. But owing to a combination of an already busy multi-event programme afloat and ashore on the islands, together with a crowded western sailing programme, these seemed the only dates available.
Unfortunately, they clashed exactly with the big one on the East Coast, the biennial Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta, thereby eliminating any significant element of national-level sport. But now, six years later and with a pandemic survived, the Aran Islands are again tops of the WIORA agenda for 2023, with Galway Bay SC the hosts.
The late Jack Roy, President of Irish Sailing, with Organising Chairman Cormac Mac Donncha at the morning of the opening day of WIORA Championship 2017 at Kilronan in the Aran Islands. That same evening, Jack Roy attended the Opening Ceremony for the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta 2017 in Dun Laoghaire Town Hall.
Back in 2017 it was Cormac Mac Donnacha of Gaway who did much of the heavy lifting in organising this pioneering effort at Kilronan, to such an all-involving extent that he says if he undertook it again for 2023, he would return home to his house in Moycullen to find the locks had been changed. And in any case, he’s already devoting much energy to organising another one of his noted GBSC Cruises-in-Company to Brittany for 2024.
But meanwhile GBSC under Commodore Johnny Shorten have a busy team in full action. There’ll be convenient pontoons back in place in Kilronan comfortably in time for July, and already the entry list has pushed through the 50 mark, so good participation is ensured to challenge the host club’s Liam Burke for the overall title (won in 2022 in Kilrush) with his Farr 31 Tribal.
Liam Burke’s Farr 31 Tribal (GBSC) was winner of WIORA 2022 at Kilrush. Photo: Robert Bateman
Yet believe it or not, the dates are Wednesday 5th to Saturday 8th July 2023. On the other side of Ireland, the dates for VDLR 2023 in Dublin Bay – set as long ago as anyone can remember - are Thursday 6th to Sunday 9th July. The diary clash is total.
PARTICULARLY TOUGH ON YOUNG J/24 CREWS
It’s doubly hard for the young (and sometimes not so young) teams racing the J/24s. One of their strongest performers is Headcase with her strong Mayo SC western connections, while in the Shannon Estuary, the McCormack clan from Foynes would enjoy taking on the east and south coast’s J/24 power in the neutral waters around the Aran Islands, but may find a clash with other events.
Back in 2017, the newly-elected sailing President, Jack Roy demonstrated his energy and enthusiasm by being personally present for the morning’s racing at opening day in WIORA, and then he turned up that evening on the other side of Ireland, on stage at the Opening Ceremony in Dun Laoghaire Town Hall for VDLR 2017. It was utterly remarkable. But in a maritime nation with a well-organised national sailing programme, surely it is something which surely should have happened only the once?
Yet perhaps with those 50-and-counting expressions of serious interest already in, the organisers reckon they’re going to have as big a fleet as they can cope with in Kilronan with their catchment area largely limited to the western seaboard. And at least they’re making it highly likely that the WIORA Champion 2023 will be from the west…
