Keith Hunt has gone from among us with dignity, just 21 days short of his 90th birthday. While we knew him mainly as a man of many and various sailing talents - with 16 Fastnet Races and several dinghy championship titles in his CV – his very well-lived life was one of numerous active interests, both ashore and afloat.
His exuberant progress through it provided many examples of how absorbingly enjoyable and fulfilling life in Ireland can be when it involves the gift of friendship with a generous interaction with the environment, and with the many similarly-minded people in country and town who live for the day, and appreciate our land, its waterways, and the sea around them.
With his rugby-playing elder son Jamie
THE BALLINASLOE AND DERRY LINKS
He father was of that elite corps, a Bank of Ireland branch manager, and thus the family were living in Ballinasloe in East Galway when he was born on October 12th 1934. His parents had met when his father was with the BoI's Coleraine branch on the north coast, and his bride Kathleen - Keith's mother - was a Derry girl, though from the county rather than the city. When they visited their beloved grandmother during World War II, Keith and his older brother's first priority was to secure the use of a couple of bicycles so that they could get to the nearest airstrip to watch the fighter planes and bombers going aloft on active service.
Subsequently, Keith was to sum up his birthplace of Ballinasloe as "a one horse town with a big horse fair". That was fair enough, as the Ballinasloe Horse Fair's reputation is such that it was where Napoleon's young cavalry officers were accustomed to source their finest horses, including the Emperor's personal favourite, Marengo. But it sums up the place in a way which suggests that, when he could make a choice, Keith Hunt was determined to live somewhere that offered just about everything possible for his eclectic, demanding and energetic tastes.
"Ballinasloe-sourced" – the distinctive Cherbourg statue of Napoleon on Marengo
YOUNGEST IN SCHOOL BY FIVE YEARS
His father's later postings took them – in some privileged style - to Midleton in East Cork and then finally to Bandon. But his parents may have thought that a Bank Manager's peripatetic lifestyle, however civilized, was too restless for a hyper-active small boy. So somehow while in Midleton they persuaded Midleton College to take him on as a boarder at the age of six, the youngest boarder by five years.
Despite his extreme youth, he took to boarding school with zest and best expressed himself through sport – he'd be top of the human gymnastics pyramid, and was very much into hockey, rugby and boxing. Being the smallest in the school, the latter stood him to the good, and on one occasion he successfully flipped the school bully down the stairs with a back roll. But his inevitably cheeky side got him in trouble with the most disciplinarian teacher, whose angry swipe removed several of the young Hunt's teeth.
Though he made lifelong friends in Midleton, it became increasingly stale for him as a place to learn, and at age 15 and already sea-experienced, he secretly applied to join the Navy. He always felt that it was his mother who - equally secretly - scuppered his chances.
THE GUINNESS CAREER PATH
Instead, she and his father sent him to the fresh and possibly more academically-demanding King's Hospital School in Dublin for his final two years of schooling, with a year devoted to studying for the Guinness Trainee Manager Scheme Entrance Exam. This he duly passed and was set on course to be a Guinness man for life, so much so that subsequently, if he came upon a friend or acquaintance necking a Heineken or something similar, they'd be in trouble.
A hub of the Irish universe – the Guinness brewery in Dublin in its heyday was the largest in the world
There were times, in those days in the 1950s in Dublin, when you might have assumed that the Trainee Managers Division in Guinness was a Department of Trinity College, particularly where sport was involved. Indeed, it was a network of unbreakable silk, involving The Irish Times and several other pillars of the old establishment.
Thus when the Guinness directors decided that it was time they had one of these new-fangled public relations people to take on the increasing demands of a developing media on their expanding business, they invited Irish Times Editor Alan Montgomery – an enthusiastic sailor in the DBSC/Howth 17 Class – up to St James Gate to advise them over lunch on how best to go about making the selection and appointment. When Monty returned in late afternoon to his desk, it was only in order to clear it – he had become the first Dublin PR Manager for Arthur Guinness Sons & Co Ltd.
SAILING IN DUN LAOGHAIRE
By this time the now Dublin-based Keith Hunt's already various sports were expanding further with his longtime interest in sailing coming centre stage with Firefly racing from the Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire, where friendship with the Trinity College sailors in DUSC was such that they made him an honorary Trinity student, and it wasn't unknown for him to sail in college teams.
The Royal St George YC in modern times – it was a much simpler setup when Keith Hunt joined in the 1950s
As for the almost-mythical time in 1961 when the Dun Laoghaire Fireflies raced on a Tuesday evening in the harbour and then took their boats on their launching trailers across to a waiting flatbed railway truck in the nearby station for onward delivery to Baltimore in West Cork for the IDRA Dinghy Week there. Keith was of course very much involved in this final splendid gesture with the West Cork Railway before it closed, as Baltimore was one of his many second homes, and he'd raced in the Solo class single-handed dinghies there in summer.
Tennis was also a big part of his life, with the Fitzwilliam club within easy reach of his commodious bachelor apartment in one of the gracious Georgian houses in Dublin's Merrion Square. As his place was spread across the finest rooms, it was on the first and second floors. But while elegant in the extreme, the builders two hundred years earlier had skimped on materials.
Firefly dinghies in the 1950s, when they were already the backbone of university sailing, and the entire class of college boats could be taken to Baltimore in West Cork by train
THE BACHELOR FLAT IN THE HEART OF TOWN
The floor joists had so little support-length at their ends that a surveyor friend had warned him that if his crowded and very convivial parties became even more crowded, the existing floor bend in the middle would become such that the entire party would descend very quickly to the ground floor, with Keith's heavy antique furniture in close pursuit to deliver the coup de grace.
His solution was simple. When guest numbers rose above a certain level, he'd bellow at them to stop working the room, and instead stand around the edges, and shout across it instead. Inasmuch as the floor never collapsed, it worked. And as for shouting your private conversations across the room, well, that made them even more interesting, even if at times it needed Keith's skill in diplomacy and people-management to prevent real rows breaking out.
RESEARCH PROJECT
With such a bachelor pad, he led an enthusiastic bachelor existence, his attractive appearance with a remarkable shock of then-dark hair making him something of a catch. But he was quite clear that his squiring of some of the prettiest girls in Ireland around town and country was ultimately a research project.
If the vital spark - the knockout realisation that this was The One - had not struck after nine months, he'd gently terminate the affair with such tact that Ireland seemed full of his former girlfriends, all with the fondest memories of a man who was now seeing fresh fields and pastures new.
His sailing was also moving into new areas. Tom Sheppard, one of the bosses in Guinness, had the Laurent Giles-designed 12 tonner Greylag of Arklow newly built by Jack Tyrrell. He was keen to do the Fastnet Race of 1961, and Keith was soon in his crew.
Tom Sheppard's Greylag of Arklow, designed by Laurent Giles and new-built by Jack Tyrrell of Arklow, was Keith Hunt's introduction to the Fastnet Race in 1961
RORC CIRCUIT
In the RORC circuit, he discovered a magic world that might have been made with his tastes and skills in mind. Where other people have to make a conscious effort to network effectively, for Keith Hunt it was the natural way of life, as he was always charmingly networking in everything he did. So although Greylag had only a moderately successful Fastnet Race in 1961, by the time the 1963 Fastnet came around, Keith Hunt was on the legendary Adlard Coles' powerful new Nicholson 36 Cohoe IV.
The Hunt effect on the close-knit offshore racing crowd sailing from the Solent area can be gauged from the fact that, in writing afterwards about their 1963 season, Adlard Coles was able to mention that Keith Hunt was in the crew without any need to further elucidate on just who Keith Hunt was.
As for Adlard Coles's effect on Keith, it was impressive and enduring. Despite many notable successes under his belt - several in notably small boats including a Transatlantic Race win - Coles looked more like the nautical book publisher, sailing writer, and qualifieded accountant that he was ashore, rather than one of the international scene's leading skippers offshore.
SERIOUS FASTNET RACE CONTENDER
Yet he was a "quiet tiger" afloat. They were doing the rough 1963 Fastnet Race in the prototype Nicholson 36 Cohoe IV, a very powerful boat to windward. But they knew that the equally new S&S 43 one-off and very expensively built Clarion of Wight would take a lot of beating.
Despite the fact that Adlard Coles had to disappear into the violently-moving forecabin each afternoon to self-administer his daily insulin injection to keep his diabetes under control, there was no let-up in the pace in hammering to windward in heavy weather down the English Channel. And as the tide was turning against them, the skipper decided that they'd take the inside passage with its narrow favourable eddy at Portland Bill.
Adlard Coles' Nicholson 36 Cohoe IV, lovingly maintained as a classic today, was outstandingly successful in the highly competitive Fastnet Race of 1963
The fact that it would be the middle of the night didn't seem to faze the skipper, so Keith and his shipmates took it in their stride as best they could. In the gaps between the night-blinding effects of the sweeping beam of the mighty Portland Bill lighthouse, it was darker than dark at Portland, but Adlard Coles had included a proper searchlight in Cohoe IV's equipment.
SEARCHLIGHT ON ROCKS
They were thus able to go very close indeed on port tack to the rocks their spotlight illuminated before tacking out into a very brief stab on starboard, and then tacking in again to repeat the searchlight exercise. They were so busy that there was no time to reflect on the spooky nature of their situation, with the violent noise of the breaking sea and the whole scene surreally but briefly totally illuminated at regular intervals by the sweep of the Portland Light beam.
But each time it came over, it showed clearly that they were making steady and then accelerating progress, and when Cohoe – still right inshore – got herself clear west of the Bill, the counter-tide faded, the seas became more regular, and they were on their way to second overall in the 1963 Fastnet Race, beaten only by the super-special Clarion of Wight, and that by just six minutes.
These days that Fastnet '63 is remembered as Clarion of Wight's, but the performance of the standard production Cohoe IV – close second overall and well ahead of all her class and everyone else – was surely equally worthy of commendation.
RON AMEY AND THE NORYEMAS
Although Adlard Coles saw it as partly being his own swan-song to the offshore majors, for Keith Hunt it provided the entrée to other front-line skippers in the RORC and international circuits, and for several seasons he was very much on the strength of the crew on a succession of successful Noryemas.
The odd name is the most easily-explained part of it all – it's simply Ron Amey spelt backwards. He was a hugely energetic if somewhat eccentric English engineering and quarry entrepreneur whose expanding businesses became Amey Roadstone, which lives on today as the "R" in that mightiest of Irish international companies, CRH aka Cement Roadstone Holdings.
The greatest of them all – Noryema XI racing as Hesperia with Dickie Gomes on the helm in 1988. Keith Hunt raced on her in the 1979 Fastnet, and she is still in Ireland as Killary Flyer
But for sailing folk, Ron Amey lives on in his bewildering successions of Noryemas, with the last offshore racing boat he owned, Noryema XI, being a 49ft Frers design of 1979 vintage which has spent much of her life in Ireland as Brian Buchanan's Hesperia, skippered by Dickie Gomes to Round Ireland victory in 1988 as Hesperia, and more recently in the Mayo as Jamie Young's expedition yacht Killary Flyer.
Ron Amey's modus operandi was to continue to develop each offshore racing yacht as far as he could, and then commission another one. He moved on with design development, starting with Charles A Nicholson, then advancing with Sparkman & Stephens and going on to several further boats with German Frers, with a brief experimental dalliance along the way with Dick Carter.
THE PEAK AMEY YEARS
The peak Amey years were in the 1960s and '70s, when he'd get a new aluminium hull – most often by Frers and built by the Irishmen at Joyce Brothers in Southampton – and then move the bare hull to Moody's on the Hamble for completion. As this progressed, he'd become ever more fully involved, such that by the time launching day approached he'd be living in a caravan in the boatshed beside the emerging latest new boat, with his PA installed in part of the caravan so that the boss could continue running his developing businesses from Hamble-side while supervising the mods to his boat.
It didn't finish with the launching, for after each race in the early part of the year's RORC calendar, the latest Noryema would be back in Moody's shed first thing Monday morning, implementing the changes suggested by the weekend's offshore experience.
FORCE OF NATURE
During those years, Keith Hunt was in his prime, and was exactly the force of nature needed to help Ron Amey move out of the boatyard-modifying frame of mind into the active campaigning approach at sea. Yet though they did many majors including several Fastnets and the 1976 Sydney-Hobart Race, the Amey episode he remembers with most entertainment was in 1969, when the skipper took a diversion with Dick Carter.
They co-designed a 49-footer, with the hull to be built in steel by Frans Maas at Breskens in The Netherlands, while she'd be finished at Moody's and fitted with a vertically lifting keel whose mechanisms would be designed and developed by Ron Amey.
VERY EXPERIMENTAL
Ever one for a bit of adventure, Keith was delighted to be appointed crew-boss on this largely experimental craft. Just how experimental she was at the beginning was indicated by a discovery on an early trial sail when, with keel completely retracted into the hull and the rudder capable of being raised should they wish, the boat lurched under spinnaker and lay on her side.
Experiment in progress – Keith Hunt (centre left) calling the shots while Ron Amey helms Noryeam VII
This revealed that while they relied on gravity to lower the keel and ingenious Ron-designed hydraulics to raise it, they'd no mechanism to push it back down again when gravity was starting to be against them.
In remembering this for years afterwards, Keith was so overcome by amusement that it wasn't quite clear why Noryema VII hadn't continue to invert as her mast filled with water, but it was gathered that a photographer's launch may have saved the day. And a week later, back on the campaign trail, Noryema VII was in action with an extra option in her keel-deployment armoury.
RISING THROUGH THE MANAGEMENT HIERARCHY
During this period, we have to remember that Keith Hunt was continuing to lead a prodigiously busy and enjoyable life back in Ireland. He rose steadily up the Guinness management system, and willingly took on the position of Guinness Galway boss in the early 1970s, though with the stipulation that they recognised that the standard Ford Cortina was not the best car to fulfill this role. Instead, he successfully argued that an over-powered Trump Vitesse convertible was exactly what was required to convey the right image for the Guinness Manager in yet another area of Ireland which provided very many choices in his pursuit of field sports.
The Triumph Vitesse 2.5 – in the early 1970s, it took some powerful persuasion to convince the sales chief in Guinness that this sporty little car was the ideal vehicle for the new Guinness Manager in Galway
But when work was top of the agenda, it definitely came first, and while he was noted for his kindness and diplomacy in difficult situations, he is equally remembered by a young Management Trainee for a quiet but clear suggestion: "You have two eyes and one mouth – use them in proportion".
IRISH CRUISING CLUB
As for sailing in Ireland, he'd been elected a member of the Irish Cruising Club in 1963 and undertook many voyages which went on to include a Transatlantic passage once he'd retired, but there was much more to be done ashore and afloat before that change of direction came along.
Another place, another race – in the crew of Noryema in the 1976 Sydney-Hobart Race
There were few One Design dinghies and keelboats he didn't experience at some stage, and Vincent Delany, that sailing polymath of Dun Laoghaire and the Shannon, remembers it well:
VINCENT DELANY RECOLLECTIONS
"I sailed with Keith many times in Dun Laoghaire and in Baltimore at an IDRA Dinghy Week. Keith was a fantastic character, an organiser of men (and women) and a bringer of fun to every situation.
"Keith's organising and people skills were such that he encouraged people to compete, and they really came along to please him, and then found they enjoyed the experience and were keen to repeat it.
"Having met him several times in recent years more than sixty years after I first met him, I found he had hardly changed at all.
I will retain good memories of a lovely man."
Vincent Delany
EXIT FROM THE 15 CLUB
With the passing of the years, Keith Hunt eventually became one of only two fully-qualified members of the 15 Club. This went way back to a group of 15 ferociously sporting and sociable young and determined bachelors in Dublin in the late '50s through the 1960s and into the early '70s who were determined to avoid matrimony for as long as possible, while enjoying the romantic life. When one of them did finally succumb to marriage, it was marked by a two-day exit-from-the-15-Club rampage with a hired bus in a way that anticipated modern stag parties, but done with much more style and better staying power.
By the late 1970s, Keith Hunt was still one of two remaining full members. But then reports filtered down from County Meath that the eternal bachelor had been seen keeping close company for longer than his usual strictly-observed nine months with the much-admired Poppy Lyons, a leading equestrienne but with nautical connections through her uncle Joe MacMenamin, the visionary property developer who owned the Olympic International Dragon Alphida.
It is 2024, and Keith (right) and Poppy Hunt are in Kinsale Yacht Club celebrating the international offshore success of their son Sam. Photo: Robert Bateman
THE 1979 FASTNET
The wedding was set for 1980, when the former veterans of the 15 Club were temporarily re-qualified for a Keith Hunt stag celebration that became the stuff of legend. But meanwhile Ron Amey was with his last and greatest Noryema XII, and the Fastnet Race 1979 – yes, the stormy Fastnet – had to be put astern with a good finish and a class podium place.
FAMILY LIFE IN KINSALE
Keith was 45 when he married, and though a very youthful 45 it was nevertheless a very clearly delineated new stage. Family became his clear first priority in a life of many interests. And though he'd risen up the Guinness hierarchy in Dublin to attain senior management roles at national level, one of his enduring ambitions was to become the Guinness manager in Cork and live in Kinsale.
Kinsale and its harbour looking south. The first Hunt family home was in Summercove on the left, and the second at Sandycove (right centre)
Both those boxes were soon ticked, and he and Poppy moved to a fine house above Summercove on the east side of Kinsale Harbour to what soon became a family home with Jamie, Sam and Holly arriving in the course of a decade.
CHALLENGE OF GUINNESS'S MAN IN CORK
Meanwhile Keith was relishing the challenges of being Guinness's main man in Cork, which he said was sometimes like being the commander of a frontier fortress in hostile territory. He found himself surrounded by sometimes less than totally friendly drinks trade opponents with the local magic nectars of Murphy, Beamish, and the Cork Distiller Company seeking their place in the sun, and all of them intimately knowing each other though a special and exclusive network in which communication and opinion was delivered through The Cork Examiner.
But he'd many friends through sailing already in Kinsale, and he extended their number by becoming a major figure in the tennis club, as he was an impressive player to amateur international standard. As for networking in business, he toed the Cork line in driving a Ford car, albeit a "top of the top of the line saloon", his Munster rugby interest also increased (if that were possible), and while his sailing gifts saw him welcome as a crew on local boats, for himself and his growing family he bought a Drascombe Lugger, which soon became part of the family.
THE SCHULL CENTENARY SPONSORSHIP
On the business front, he was able to combine commercial acumen with a bit of fun when he put the full Guinness resources behind the celebration of the Schull Centenary Regatta in 1984. The Schull Regatta was seen by many as the very essence of Cork holiday sailing, yet here was the Guinness brew coming in under the radar with its cheeky cheerful manager putting rival's noses out of joint in what became a hugely enjoyable event.
Summertime in Schull Harbour, where Keith ensured that Guinness sponsored the high-profile Centenary Regatta in 1984
At international offshore level, his adaptability and talent were still much appreciated, as he was one of those compact and uktra-able shipmates who turned up on time, with all his gear neatly arranged in one or two handily-sized kitbags, and his talent in any role an asset on all boats. That said, he did confide in private that he thought the modern trend of requiring crews on deck to hook on in safety harnesses was irksome, as it hampered his agility of movement where he had always been noted as someone who could move quickly and efficiently around the deck as though he was an integral part of the boat.
CONTINUOUS FASTNET RACES FOR 32 YEARS
This meant that he could always get a position on one of the world's growing fleet of 70-80ft Maxis, and thus his Fastnet total was steadily increasing, until by 1989 he was looking back at 16 completed, 32 years of competing in every Fastnet Race staged by the RORC since 1961.
The heyday of IOR Maxi racing, with Condor thrashing along to weather of Kialoa. These demanding boats provided the concluding chapter of Keith Hunt's international offshore racing career. Photo: Larry Moran
It was set to become 17 in 1989, as he had a berth on a Maxi neatly lined up for a few days hence. But a family medical complication arose, he cancelled his 17th continuous Fastnet Race without a second thought, and gave his full attention to playing a key role in the successful solution of the family matter.
"ONLY A BOAT RACE"
Some time later in a small group of sailors, one of them observed to him that had he gone racing in the 1989 Fastnet, he would soon be in line to have done a record 20 Fastnet races on the trot, and wasn't it a pity he hadn't left professionals to sort the medical problem, and gone ahead to do the race? Keith Hunt gave him a look that would have pierced steel, and quietly said: "For Heaven's sake man, it's only a boat race".
Family and home life around Kinsale and outdoors was now everything to him, and the three children - Jamie, Sam and Holly - were encouraged into an energetic way of life, with Jamie in rugby and Sam well known and successful in sailing. As well, Keith much enjoyed taking them on less structured activities, and they particularly remembered camping on an uninhabited island in West Cork with one very gale-battered night spent hanging on to the remains of their tent.
THE CARRANTUOHILL "WILD CLIMB"
Another time, they were travelling past Ireland's highest mountain of Carrantuohill on a clear and inviting day, so Keith cheerfully suggested they all climb it, and they did so. This was even though he had no map or compass or anything that more orthodox mountaineers might consider essential on a peak notorious for its sudden weather changes.
"Sure who needs a map or compass on a day like this?" Carrantuohill in good weather
Kinsale was very much home, and Keith continued sailing – occasionally long distances, including an Atlantic crossing - on Kinsale boats such as his longtime friend Conor Doyle's Xp50 Freya. But throughout all his continuing experiences afloat, the little Drascombe continued to give him much pleasure and the source of much fresher-than-fresh seafood for supper.
ONE MOVE FOR THE HORSES
The Hunt family have moved just once since they located to Kinsale. But it was only across the harbour to a more secluded place at Sandycove, which came with six acres to enable Poppy to give more direct attention to her beloved horses.
ANOTHER MILLENNIUM
These days, the Hunt name comes up with well-earned regularity in sailing when Sam Hunt scores another success. His father's remarkable success in sailing and in many other sports is now almost entirely something that happened in another Century, indeed in another Millennium, and half-lost in the mists of time
There are still some around who can remember this personally, and can probably add further extraordinary stories to the fantastic history of Keith Hunt. He knew how to live, how to live very well indeed, and yet be a selfless asset to any group with whom he found himself. Our heartfelt condolences are with Poppy, Holly, Jamie & Sam, and Keith Hunt's many close friends.
Keith Hunt in his well-used Drascombe Lugger fishing off Kinsale. Photo: Hunt family
