With direct links to two of the three boats in Ireland's 2024 Olympic Sailing Team, Howth YC's 1800-plus members - led by Commodore Neil Murphy – have been fortifying themselves against the vicarious stress of unfolding events in Marseille.
Out there, our Olympic representatives are trained to withstand the pressures, and in a sense they're in the uncanny quiet in the eye of the storm. But in that emotional storm's outer edges back in Ireland, their many supporters are being buffeted about by accentuated emotions of hope and disappointment.
However, Howth YC has so many proven management gurus in its key committees that they've ensured the Club's high-season events programme is a kaleidoscope of events that emphasise home strengths and heritage sailing, and keep their more sensitive members on an even keel even as word of a narrowly-missed Olympic medal befalls them.
Crazy but it works. Howth manages to be a sailing centre, historical focus point, fishery harbour, lifeboat station, hospitality hub, DART railhead, and fiercely independent peninsula port all at once
NO WAY THESE BOATS COULD BE OLYMPIC CLASSES
By emphasising their root strengths in local sailing in a place where it's enough of an achievement to be getting a vintage sailing boat out of the shared entrance of a busy sailing/fishing port, the Powers-That-Be-In-HYC have been providing very successful and reassuring distractions. For even their most dedicated adherents will agree that there's no way the Squibs, Mermaids, Howth 17s and Puppeteer 22s could ever have been or be seen as potential Olympic Classes.
The 1932-designed Mermaids in their heartlands, racing in the trophy-winning ambience of Rush Sailing Club. Photo: RSC
Yet in the space of four weeks from July 26th to August 25th, Howth will have hosted the annual National Championship of all four of those characterful classes, each of them in a world of its own, far from the Olympic pressure cooker.
Puppeteer 22s racing off Howth at the 2024 Wave Regatta Photo: Afloat
Admittedly in the same period HYC will also be hosting its Junior Regatta, a major regional event, on Sunday August 11th, while the extended mid weekend of the month soon after sees the Howth-hosted Optimist Nationals from 14th to 18th August. And that final 24-25th August weekend will see the inaugural Irish Melges 15 at the same time – but on a different sailing area – as the closed-shop Puppeteer 22s with their Worlds.
Getting them back in. Optimists being shepherded back into Howth before the fishing fleet return. Photo: HYC
HOWTH PENINSULA'S FLAITHÚLACH FOLK
Nevertheless there's no doubt about the "down home" strength of this programme. Yet while it may seem a very Howth-centric set of boats and events, the sailing folk of the peninsula appear to be in a distinctly flaithulach frame of mind these days. For although the Squib Class in the Republic started with a keen group in Howth way back in 1979, 45 years later they hosted Squibs and crew from eleven different clubs for the 2024 Irish Nationals, and generously allowed visiting crews to take the top ten places.
The leading honours were divided between Kinsale YC and Royal North of Ireland YC of Cultra on Belfast Lough, with Micheal O'Suilleabhain and Michael O'Sullivan of Kinsale racing Mucky Duck to come through as the very clear winners.
Are aliens invading from Deep Space? No-one would dream of suggesting that the weird clouds seen over Howth at last weekend's Squib Nationals might have something to do with the proximity of the revenue-generating airport. Photo: HYC Racing
But this weekend's double programme should see more of a Fingal flavour on the trophy list. The Nationals for the Howth 17s got under way last night, and hopes to conclude this (Saturday) evening. Even though this unique class with its 60 races per year draws in sailors from all over Leinster, there should only be HYC names on the prize list.
SKERRIES DEFENDING TODAY
And as for the Mermaids, in their own way they're "almost nationwide" like Shaw's Department Store in the olden days. almost nationwide with some serious expressions of interest from the north. But currently the very long-established fleet at Skerries is setting the pace. Defending national champion Darrach Dineen of Skerries SC, crewed by Sean Peckham and Breda Magner, already has the Munster Championship 2024 won at Foynes under his belt, and his boat Endeavour No 102 is surely the favourite.
Multiple defender – Darrach Dineen's Mermaid Class Endeavour from Skerries currently holds several titles. Photo: SSC
Either way, there's always something special when the 17ft clinker-built Mermaids congregate at Howth. They were originally designed by John B Kearney in 1932 when he was very busy, having just completed building the 9-ton yawl Sonia with only the assistance of her commissioning owner, the one-legged railway engineer William Blood Smyth. This was done while he was accepting the reality that he was the de facto Harbour Engineer to Dublin Port, despite having no formal engineering qualifications,
He'd a lot on his plate, so not surprisingly his original 1932 drawings for the Mermaid were a bit sketchy, and it was left to that genius amateur builder, Charlie Sargent of Clontarf and later Sutton, to tidy them up as the class took off in the late 1940s, when John Kearney dearly hoped that the Mermaids would take hold at Howth, as his first proper club had been Howth SC.
MAGUIRE MAGIC KILLS ANY HOWTH MERMAID CLASS
He put up the President's Trophy to be raced annually at Howth over the August Bank Holiday, and at its peak in the early 1950s, it was regularly attracting more than 80 entries from many Leinster ports. But even with this boost, the Mermaids in Howth never took off. For as soon as they mustered enough boats to be recognised as a club class for regular racing, the young Neville Maguire – who had crewed offshore while still a schoolboy for John Kearney aboard Mavis – tended to win everything in such insouciant style that the Mermaids as a local class withered again at Howth, and Nevillle Maguire had to go to Clontarf to find decent racing.
The legendary Neville Maguire racing Elf, his all-conquering Mermaid, in 1949
HOWTH 17s MINDFUL OF EACH OTHER AND NEXT GENERATION
One of the more curious differences between sailing in the Republic, when compared with that of Northern Ireland, is that several of the leading club-sailed One-Design classes in the south have a parallel handicap division. They regard having this parallel continuously-adjusted performance handicap system beside the pure One-Design level racing as normal and sensible in having a healthy class.
It's curious because the golf handicap system, the very backbone of club golf worldwide, was first formulated by the Belfast branch of the Golfing Union of Ireland some time around 1892. Yet if you suggest in the North that some of their more venerable O-D classes might benefit from cutting their slower sailors a bit of slack in the same way, as keepers of the flame from the 1895-founded Belfast Lough One-Design Association they're horrified by the very idea.
QUIXOTIC TOPSAILS
But the 1898-founded Howth 17s live in the real world, even if it seems Quixotic to continue sailing in jackyard-topsail-toting boats that are exactly as they were designed 126 years ago. Thus they diligently maintain the continuing record of race placings and times, thereby provide an alternative yet complementary view of the results as produced by HPH, with fresh names emerging.
Unmistakable. The Howth 17s as stylized by Howth artist Carol O'Meara
Nevertheless with so many results marching across various screens, it has to be admitted that getting the HPH results their time in the spotlight sometimes takes a bit of doing, whereas first past the post immediately hits the button. Be that as it may, the Howth 17s take a broader view and continue to hunt as a pack.
This became very evident last year when they descended on West Cork for a week to celebrate their 125th Anniversary. This year being very much home-based, they've been busy with "nautical community work", last weekend seeing their Family Day with the entertainment of three specials in one day, with the Single-handed Race won by Mark FitzGibbon on Orla, the Ladies Race won by Emma McDonald sailing Erica, and the Crews Race, taken by Matthew Cotter helming Hera.
INTENSE PROGRAMME
With an intense Championship programme started with a non-topsail race last night, and continuing intensively today under as much sail as they can carry, the stakes are high as several boats have been showing formidable form, notably the 1907-built defending champion Deilginis (Toomey, Massey & Kenny) and Hera (Jane and Michael Duffy). The most recent race on Tuesday evening went to Erica (Davie Nixon) ahead of Hera, with Peter Courtney's Oona third, Rosemary (Curley, Jones & Potter) fourth, and one of the five original 1898 boats, Roddy Cooper's Leila, in fifth.
But sixth was Sheila (Dave Mulligan & Andy Johnston). Last year in the two day Championship, Sheila never put a foot wrong, and became the 2023 Champion in style. By this evening (Saturday), we should know who has managed to do something similar.
One of the reasons for the Howth 17's continuing good health is that the harbour redevelopments have always retained an outer harbour that enables them to sail to and from their moorings. Photo: HYC
