Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Recipe for a great day of celebration:

1. Put together a well-earned praise-fest in which the lead speaker is a senior Government Minister and sailing enthusiast of the calibre of Simon Coveney TD.

2. Add in a lively attendance of 270-plus that includes a raft of international sailing legends, and more former Admirals of the Royal Cork Yacht Club and RORC Flag Officers than have been seen together in the one place for many a long time.

3. Mix well with oodles of goodwill and much maritime camaraderie.

4. Savour the quality of the celebration of the continuing sailing life of Donal McClement, which was staged under the guise of the annual RNLI lunch at the Rochestown Park Hotel in Cork on Thursday.

Once an event of this style is up and running, it all seems effortless and self-generating. But let it be said that while many subscribed to the idea of such an event and felt they were involved in its inception, it was Clive Higgins who did the heavy lifting in putting it all together. And in John Crotty, he found the perfect MC to keep things running smoothly at exactly the right level of levity.

More than 270 people – some far-travelled - turned up for the RNLI Donal McClement Lunch at the Rochestown Park Hotel. Photo: Darragh Kane

Royal Cork YC Admiral Kieran O’Connell speaking at the McClement Lunch. Photo: Darragh Kane

 But if you seek further hard statistics to complete the overall picture and assess the mood of dedicated goodwill, let it be said that the party was well under way by noon with early participants having jetted in from the UK and further afield, yet the more determined celebrants were still to be found going strong somewhere northwards of nine hours later, for this was indeed a whole-hearted blast from the past, but with a very healthy contemporary resonance.

A ONE-MAN SAILING UNIVERSE

Donal McClement of Crosshaven is a one-man sailing universe, a unique and characterful bundle of enthusiasm outstanding in a sport already noted for the soaring individuality of its participants. Yet those of us from other sailing centres who have known him for many years would be hard put to say when we first met him. Could it have been a Dinghy Week back in the day, when Dinghy Weeks were very much the main thing, and everyone from everywhere seemed to be involved? Or was it in the late 1960s when the proliferation of new glassfibre series-produced boats suddenly made the RORC programme accessible, and a growing group of Irish enthusiasts were a nautical moveable feast, with everyone knowing everyone else?

Donal McClement and Minister Simon Coveney TD at the RNLI lunch. Photo: Darragh Kane

At that time, offshore racing numbers and RORC involvement were growing to such an extent that in March 1972 some far-sighted observers put themselves to the trouble of organising an Irish Fastneteers Dinner in the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. Their reckoning was that this was the last time they would be able to hold a manageable gathering of everyone who had ever done the Fastnet Race on an Irish boat, and as their Guest of Honour was Captain Jim Kelly who had been the youngest crew-member on Harry Donegan’s Gull from Cork in the first Fastnet Race of 1925 (they were on the podium with a third), we still have among us people who were there in 1972 and will feel a direct personal connection to the first Fastnet Race when the Centenary is staged in 2025.

BUILDING SAILING NEWWORKS

But the point of all this is that it was the period when Donal McClement was first building networks throughout offshore racing which, in their way, reflected the effortlessly-maintained inter-family sailing networks of his boyhood in Crosshaven with the Royal Munster Yacht Club.

Born in June 1943, he was of a sailing family which encouraged the youngsters afloat in whatever boats the juniors of the day favoured, and though the International 12s were still a force to be reckoned with, the young Donal – who showed an exceptional natural aptitude around boats – was one of those who honed extra skills in Crosshaven’s fleet of International Cadets, an elite flotilla which set the benchmark for Cadet racing in Ireland.

A modern GRP version of the International Cadet, designed by Jack Holt in 1947

When the exciting 505s made their appearance, despite still being very young he was one of those more than willing to have a go on the trapeze. But it was when his lifelong friend, the late Dougie Deane, acquired the IDRA 14 Dusk (originally built for 1948 Olympian Hugh Allen), that the duo acquired the boat which best defined their sailing style in the 1950s, rounded out by winning the coveted Dognose Trophy in 1959.

Donal McClement showing how it should be done on the trapeze with Dougie Deane in the IDRA 14 Dusk in Cork Harbour

However, it wasn’t all dinghy sailing and racing. Like all the Crosshaven kids, he had soon trained himself up to be a useful hand on a keelboat, and inevitably most summers saw at least one cruise to West Cork and beyond, with the traditional overnight passage races thrown in.

Thus he was able to demonstrate that he was increasingly at one with whatever boat he was sailing on, a natural at every aspect of the sport who moved easily, comfortably and quickly around a boat in an effective way which totally belied the fast that, in adult life, he has tended to the amply-built physical style.

A WONDERFUL MAN IN A BOAT

In fact, simply sailing with Donal McClement and observing him in action is highly educational. He has a certain restlessness when he feels something is not as it should be, yet will put the problem right with a minimum of fuss. His cockpits are always tidy, with ropes not immediately in use always quickly and neatly coiled away. Below, the sail stowage is optimized for access and convenience, and the array of lines for multiple purposes will be stowed with exemplary neatness. He is a seaman to his finger-tips, moving like an integral part of the boat when sailing.

The transferability of all these talents took a new turn in 1964 when he decided to join the RAF. Most of us will see this internationally-operating Air Force through a rather narrow lens, but Donal McClement saw beyond the superficial image to a complex organisation which – during his eighteen-and-a-half years with it – provided him with an extraordinary variety of tasks and opportunities, while also permitting an expansion of his sailing activities.

Donal McClement kitted out for Air-Sea Rescue services

The day job….Air-Sea Rescue is not for the faint-hearted

Thus although he became known as a pioneering crewman – the winchman to be precise - in the developing air-sea rescue helicopter service, he was also a navigator, and outside of the day job, he was an increasing force in the RAF Sailing Association, which was making an impact in RORC racing with the S&S34 Slipstream of Cowley.

Most S&S34s had “Morning” as the first part of their name. But the recreational and sporting activities of the RAF were largely funded by the Nuffield Trust founded by car mogul William Morris, later Lord Nuffield, and as the main Morris car factories were in Cowley - about as far as it is possible to get from the sea in England – the RAFSA reckoned Cowley deserved its place in the sun at sea.

It was a neat gesture which may have played a role in what was to become Donal McClement’s greatest sailing achievement while he was based in England. But before that happened in 1979, his sailing links to the likes of frontline owner-skipper-boatbuilders like Richard Matthews were steadily developing to become a network which would serve him well when he returned to Cork in the early 1980s and set up his international yacht brokerage and agency office within Denis Doyle’s Crosshaven Boatyard.

Meanwhile, 1979 was of course the year of the great Fastnet storm. But while it was the finest hour for the Air Sea Rescue Helicopter Services, Donal wasn’t part of this very real exercise, even though he had spent much of his working time in the 1970s “trying to assess our Sea King’s night distance from a very black and williwaw-bedevilled Cornish cliff, while we attempted to haul some lunatic to safety”.

TOP IRISH SKIPPER IN 1979 FASTNET

He wasn’t in winchman action in 1979 for the very good reason that he was skippering a boat in the Fastnet Race itself. Relations with the Nuffield Trust had remained very cordial after the success of Slipstream of Cowley, so when he found himself with a more permanent posting at a comfortably-furnished RAF base, he persuaded some boat-minded colleagues that it would be good for morale to use a handy big shed nearby for a team exercise to complete the bare hull of a Holman & Pye-designed UFO 34 from Colvic into the finished product of a competitive offshore racer, with imaginative use of the 50% Nuffield Trust grant minimizing debt for the build team, as it would all balance out when the boat was eventually sold after two or three seasons.

The UFO34 Black Arrow in summery conditions in the Solent. With a determined and skilled crew led by Donal McClement, she overcame the super-storm of the 1979 Fastnet Race to win Class IV

The new boat – called Black Arrow as a nod to their employer despite having a white hull – fulfilled many roles, including training. But for the 1979 Fastnet Race she was fully crewed up with experienced hands and Donal McClement as skipper, and despite being of the size cohort that suffered most in the rapidly changing Force 10-plus conditions that caused so much death and destruction through the fleet, she came through with such style that she won Class IV.

MAINTAINING CONTROL

Subsequently, Donal put it very simply:

“It was absolutely essential to keep some sort of steering control, as we’d a sharp-bowed boat, and I felt the best way to deal with these near-vertical breakers was to go straight through them as neatly as possible, and as quickly as possible within the limits of not going so fast that we became dangerously airborne on the other side. It was a very fine balancing act which required constant helming attention as we made northwestwards towards the Fastnet, with just the smallest headsail set.

“Provided you keep way on, you really can make to windward despite your only sail power being right at the nose of the ship. And of course this also meant we were making general westing, eventually into an area of less wind - very important, as the bad weather was only moving slowly eastward.

“The essence of it all was to retain control. It seemed to me that taking down all sail and lying a-hull was tantamount to surrendering. We had some charge of our destiny, and though conditions had deteriorated so much, with such an unbelievably confused sea that there was now no hope of our being able to offer any meaningful help to any other boats in difficulty, our first duty was not to become a boat in difficulty ourselves.

“Black Arrow saw us through, and we rounded the Rock and headed for Plymouth across an easing sea. We’d become so attuned to maintaining total helming and safety vigilance that it was almost a surprise (but not quite) to be told we’d won Class IV.”

THE RETURN TO CROSSHAVEN

It was a remarkable peak of achievement with which to end his years with the RAF, for soon afterwards he and Denis Doyle were looking at ways in which he could be both the broker and agent associated with Crosshaven Boatyard while filling the very necessary new role of Boat Manager with The Doyler’s universally-admired and very active Crosshaven-built Frers 51 Moonduster, while at the same time maintaining Donal’s links with Richard Matthews and his expanding Oyster Yachts empire.

A superb creation of Crosshaven Boatyard. To give of her best, Denis Doyle’s magnificent Frers 51 Moonduster required a dedicated Boat Manager, and Donal McClement was the right man in the right place at the right time. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O’Brien

Moonduster leading Class 1 in the 1983 RORC Seine Bay race, Donal McClement on trim and Grattan Roberts on the helm

Thus in the space of a few years he was involved with Moonduster’s commitment to the new Round Ireland Race from Wicklow which saw an enduring course record set in 1984, and at the same time he was central to an Atlantic Circuit campaign with Richard Matthews’ interesting Stephen Jones-design Oyster 43 Stormbird, with which he’d to deal with a dismasting in mid-Atlantic on the return passage.

Moonduster with the Fastnet Rock astern during her record-breaking win of the 1984 Round Ireland Race “when we saw off an entire Irish county in every watch”. Neil Hegarty on helm, and Donal McClement (white hat) on mainsheet trim. Photo: Brendan Fogarty

A NATIONAL TREASURE OF IRISH SAILING

This resulted in the exemplary creation of a jury rig which was to help them home, and once it was in place, one of the crew observed: “The job done, Donal sat himself down at the chart table, and consumed an enormous meal as if he’d just completed another ordinarily busy day at the office”.  

On another tack, he played a key role in the creation of the Tony Castro-designed 26ft 1720 Sportsboats for the Royal Cork with the official unveiling coming in 1994, and once settled again into the comfortable Crosshaven ambience, he has become a regular volunteer in committees running events large and small, his distinctive and eminently-imitable voice (particularly by Mike O’Donnell or Eddie English) being used to good entertainment effect for the morning announcements.

And so it goes on. You could write a book about Donal McClement, and the good news is that somebody is doing that very thing. But that’s a story for another day. Meanwhile, Thursday has certainly put down a marker as to how the National Treasures of Sailing in Ireland should be celebrated.

“We did it!” RCYC Tricentennial Admiral Colin Morehead had been hoping to stage the Donal McClement Lunch during the pandemic-restricted RCYC 300 celebrations in 2020, when he was in the senior role. But this week, he shared the general delight that it had finally come to pass. Photo: Darragh Kane