Along the Atlantic seaboard and up in the hills, they call them high stool days. Such days are with us when the weather is so thrawn that a particularly harsh period is best spent in agreeable indoor surroundings, with good company if you so wish. Yet although the early part of the current season has at times had more than its fair share of less-than-perfect sailing conditions, every so often there have been days - usually one but sometimes two – when everything has been in alignment, providing blissful sailing and the vivid memories that will dominate the recollections of this developing summer.
For the word from some Met sources is that we may be about to experience the reverse of last year’s conditions. In 2023, late May and the first three weeks of June were good weatherwise, but as June drew to a close, the shutters came down and there were only the briefest spells of decent weather until something more normal returned in September.
GOOD WEATHER CAN BE MIXED BLESSING
Now, however, we hear that some meteorological models are indicating that it will continue unsettled for another couple of weeks, but then it will start to get better. Which may seem fine and dandy, but it can mean that evening racing in particular often peters out in a warm calm. And with the time-honoured evening racing programmes a backbone of our club sailing world, good weather can become a mixed blessing.
BUSY NEWS FROM CROSSHAVEN
Nevertheless at the moment the news is good and there’s an upbeat attitude, with the Royal Cork YC notably reporting a surge in their Thursday evening cruiser-racer fleets at Crosshaven, while they’ve a high quality and varied entry in place for Volvo Cork Week in five weeks’ time.
Making the best of one of 2024’s good weekend evenings – Sally O’Keeffe being a West Cork towel sail yawl in North Harbour, Cape Clear. Photo: James Devane
Meanwhile as Spring unevenly becomes early Summer, while difficult weather meant we had the shortening of Kinsale YC’s Inistearaght Race to take the turn at the dentally-challenged Bull Rock instead, and an ISORA Race was blown out altogether, nevertheless the points are a-building for those local classes enthusiastic enough to get their sailing going when late Spring had seemed determined to stay in mid-winter.
Among such challenging gaps, there were some wonderfully clear periods, and there was one of them for the delivery cruise of the little 25ft Shannon Hooker Sally O’Keeffe from Kilrush to Baltimore on May 18th, well in time for the Wooden Boat Festival there in the last weekend of May.
Sally O’Keeffe voyages from the Shannon to Baltimore
BALTIMORE WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL
One of the highlights of that gathering was the talk by Cormac Levis of Ballydehob about The Richard. Cormac Levis is a one-man knowledge repository and ideas machine for the benefit of traditional and classic boats in West Cork, and he gave an excellent outline of why The Richard was so important.
The Richard in her prime, on Regatta Day at Sherkin
When she was built in 1948 by Paddy Hegarty at Oldcourt on the Ilen River, her construction brought a new direction and location for a craft industry which continues today with Paddy’s grandson Liam. The recent output includes the Conor O'Brien phase ignited by Gary MacMahon with the restoration of the 56ft trading ketch Ilen of 1926 vintage, and the building for Fred Kinmonth of the new Saoirse, replicating the 42ft ketch which was in process of circling the world south of the great Capes exactly a century ago.
DERMOT KENNEDY’S ASGARD II VISION
The Richard was a working ketch whose best-known period was under the ownership of Dermot Kennedy of Baltimore, whose visions for Irish sailing were such that the ideas he enunciated for the new Irish sail training ship Asgard II way back in 1972 were seen to have been almost exactly implemented when she was finally sailing in 1981.
This powerful vision was clarified in various discussions during a cruise-in-company around Carbery’s islands for a lengthy visit to Cape Clear and then a wedding on Sherkin, with Dermot and the usual eclectic selection of friends and shipmates on The Richard showing what could be done with a squaresail in confined harbour manoeuvring, while we were on a spot of family cruising with the Galion 22 Ringhaddy, one of the cleverest and most gallant little boats of her day, and still a good ’un.
THE RICHARD DISAPPEARS IN THE AZORES
In Dermot’s ownership, The Richard was cruised extensively, and then he sold her in the late 1980s to a man who got as far as the Azores while returning from the Caribbean, but then seems to have run out of energy and resources. Thus when Liam Hegarty went to the islands in 1994 on family duty in search of this pioneering vessel which had started the contemporary Oldcourt story, it emerged that the island authorities had lost patience with an abandoned ship encumbered with unpaid bills, and all traces of The Richard had disappeared.
The Galion 22 Ringhaddy and the ketch Richard “slightly dried out” at North Harbour, Cape Clear, July 1972. Photo: W M Nixon
Doing it in style – Dermot Kennedy brings The Richard into North Harbour under the square topsail. Photo: W M Nixon
Knowing just when to strike the topsail is crucial when running under sail only into a confined space like North Harbour. Photo: W M Nixon
Work time. Dermot Kennedy using the island phone on Cape Clear to keep tabs on his West Cork business empire while cruising the islands in The Richard. Photo: W M Nixon
Off to the island wedding – Dermot Kennedy (second right) setting the pace on Sherkin, with the Richard anchored in the cove. Photo: W M Nixon
An island wedding on Sherkin can attract a global attendance. Photo: W M Nixon
The happy bride on Sherkin
Back in July 1972, the island wedding on Sherkin was recorded on film by the late Eamonn de Buitlear from atop a farm cart, with an assistant to hold the camera tripod in place. Photo: W M Nixon
Close quarter sailing with The Richard through the sounds of Carberry’s Hundred Isles, Dermot Kennedy in profile just forward of the mizzen mast. Photo: W M Nixon
Aboard The Richard in a breeze, with Georgina Campbell on the helm. The lacing on the mizzen luff was always Work in Progress. Photo: W M Nixon
The Richard coming through the northwest entrance to Baltimore Harbour in July 1972. Once upon a time. we’d have said this was a sight we’ll never see again. But after the re-creation of Conor O'Brien’s Saoirse, surely all things are possible?
FASTNET ROCK AND NORTH HARBOUR CAPE CLEAR
But the effects of her building lives on in other boats, and while Sally O’Keeffe’s design is developed from Shannon traditions, she shows the same robust transom-stern hull concept. Then when she used last weekend’s superb weather (particularly on Saturday) to circle the Fastnet (getting our magic header pic) and have an overnight at North Harbour on Cape Clear, the Seol Sionna crew set up a tent arrangement over her open cockpit to emulate the local tradition of mackerel-fishing towel-sail yawls, where “towel” is an adaptation of the Irish word for shelter, and not an eccentric use of bathroom fabrics.
Intense summer for GP14 Leinsters at Howth, with serial championship winner Sean Craig (Royal St George YC) adding another notch to his belt. Photo: HYC
NEW MELGES 15 FLEET AT HOWTH
Meanwhile on the other side of Ireland, last weekend’s marvellous weather provided ideal condition for an historic time at Howth. There, having only just recovered from staging the three-day Wave Regatta, they hosted the GP 14 Leinsters with serial boat championship winner Sean Craig of Dun Laoghaire taking the honours (it’s easier now to list the classes in which he hasn’t won), while at the same time as Howth Yacht Club’s new fleet of fifteen Melges 15s arrived ready to be unwrapped in a successful initiative steered by Cormac Farrelly.
OFFSHORE ACTION
With ISORA, this weekend sees a classic – the Holyhead-Rockabill-Dun Laoghaire. However, last season’s champion, Paul O’Higgins JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI (RIYC), had been sitting it out in much of the offshore stuff this year (though she’s now entry Number 53 in the Round Ireland in two weeks time) but powerfully demonstrated his commitment to the inshore scene with a win in DBSC on Thursday, and doubtless after the Round Ireland she’ll catch breath and then spread her wings with Volvo Cork Week in July and Calves Week at Schull in August.
Paul O’Higgins’ JPK 10.80 ROckabill VI is Entry 53 in the SSE Renewables Round Ireland race 2024 in a fortnight’s time. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O’Brien
GETTING THE FLEET TO CORK
To get the fleets south and west, ISORA are committed to full support of the Kingstown to Queenstown Race on July 12th, which is anachronistically named in this style as that’s the way it was first sailed way back in 1860.Thus it’s one of the oldest passage races in the world, and was sailed from Dublin Bay to Cork Harbour three times in the 1860s.
THE BIG ONE ON JUNE 22nd
Before the K2Q, there is the big one, the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race (now with 58 entries) from Wicklow on June 22nd. Our focus will be almost totally zooming in on that through the next two weeks, but its start just happens to be plumb in the middle of the weekend when some weather gurus say the real summer is going to arrive. This will be viewed with mixed feelings by the old hands, as they know only too well that good weather and light winds along the Atlantic coasts make for excruciatingly slow progress.
THE WORD ON THE WATERFRONT
The word on the waterfront among the old salts who have raced the ocean coasts in winds strong and light is that even in strong winds with the boat zipping along, the coastal scenery (if you can see it) is on such a majestic scale that you scarcely seem to be moving. So in light airs you have to be instrument-glued to believe you’re moving at all.
BERMUDA RACE GETS WARMER ALL THE TIME
This is one of the challenges of racing around a land-mass, whereas a true ocean race puts the focus on the boat without such distractions. Ironically the day, before the Round Ireland, across the pond the 636 mile CCA/RBYC Newport-Bermuda Race gets going on Friday June 21st, and it very quickly puts the fleet out of sight of land as they set off across the Gulf Stream in search of the elusive Onion Patch.
A gas man - Kenny read getting in the sprit of things at the Volvo World Race stopover in Galway in 2012. On Friday June 21st he’ll be leading the commentary team for the new spectator-friendly start of the biennial Newport-Bermuda Race. Photo: VWR
Those who have thought the biennial Bermuda Race was always 635 miles are quite right, but this year – partly inspired by the in-harbour start of the Sydney-Hobart - they’ve added an extra mile to start in Newport Harbor at Fort Adams for spectator interest, and with Kenny Read on the commentary team, there’ll be meaningful general spectator interest for the first time.
For decades, the start of the Newport-Bermuda Race was immediately seaward of Newport, Rhode Island’s natural harbour, and every mile sailed took the fleet south towards warmer waters Photo: CCA/Daniel Forster
The Royal Bermuda YC marina with the Newport-Bermuda fleet in port, basking in sub-tropical conditions. Photo: CCA
But the USP of the Bermuda Race continues to be the fact that it gets into warmer climes every mile of the way. The Fastnet Race and the Round Ireland both involve significant distances sailing in higher latitudes than their starting line. And the Sydney-Hobart is pure murder, as you’re bashing along towards Antarctica every inch of the way. But the Bermuda Race starts in the agreeable summer weather of New England at Rhode Island, and concludes in the sub-tropical climate of Bermuda.
Thus one of the challenges – every bit as demanding as your racing sails selection – is hitting on the right cut and length for your essential-for-cooling Bermuda shorts. An experience - now some years ago admittedly – of staying in the New York Yacht Club discovered that they expect you to wear a necktie for breakfast, (plus of course jacket, shirt, trousers and shoes, though one member assured us socks were optional).
It takes confidence to wear Breton red Bermuda shorts with style, but after winning the top trophies in the Newport-Bermuda Race 2022 with the Pac 52 Warrior Won, owner Chris Sheehan (centre) is on target. Photo: CCA
The Irish response, when eligible, is to wear the Royal Cork YC tie, as the Royal Cork’s ancestral Water Club was founded 124 years before the NYYC came into being in 1844. But any links to the Royal Cork are of little use in hitting the right note with your Bermuda shorts in the Royal Bermuda YC, so naturally we got to thinking: What would Captain Thomas Fleming Day have done?
Thomas Fleming Day’s 38ft Tamerlane, winner of the first Bermuda Race in 1906, when the general opinion in the sailing establishment was that you need a boat at least 80ft long to race confidently to Bermuda from the New England coast.
But any formal photos of the Editor of The Rudder magazine, who was the key figure in staging the first Bermuda Race from the US in 1906 (with the gallant support of the Royal Bermuda YC), tend to show a serious person for whom such trivia as the details of menswear would have been of little interest.
But Thomas Fleming Day merits more study. The name seems pure American WASP (though “Day” might have Irish origins way back), yet he was born in the rather non-nautical shire of Somerset in England in 1861, but his formative years were spent on the shores of Long Island Sound as his parents emigrated to America whole he was a young boy.
So he became ultra-American - and boat-bonkers with it - throughout his 66 years which ended when he died in Harlem in New York in 1927. He was opinionated and drew the attention of supporters and opponents with equal zeal, but the usual formal photos of the era make it difficult to imagine an easy-going interest in male attire.
ONE COOL DUDE
But then we stumbled on this unusually informal pic of Tom Fleming Day in relaxed mode on a beach. It’s astonishing for the time. This is one cool dude. He could wear anything with style. But his Breton-red Bermuda shorts would inevitably be well weathered to a very pale pink shade. And they would be strangers to a Corby hosenbugler.
One cool dude. Thomas Fleming Day defied the expectations of his time afloat and ashore
