The Irish sailing community may think of John Gore-Grimes of Howth, who has died at the age of 84 after a long and very fulfilled life, as primarily being one of our own. We think of him as a “sailing great” who significantly extended the limits of the voyaging into High Latitudes, and through the ice, that could be achieved with a well-found version of a classic contemporary GRP-constructed sailing cruiser.
He was indeed that and much more in sailing, with his international ventures balanced by a very positive belief in developing the sailing at his home club in Howth, both through his active support and enthusiastic involvement in the venerable 1898-founded Howth 17 class, and his leading role in the introduction of the Laser class to HYC in 1974.
NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL
Then too, he was an extremely effective committee man and administrator in major national and international sailing and maritime organisations. His active involvement included being the Commissioner of Irish Lights who headed the specialist group overseeing the transfer of all Irish Lights administrative activities to the impressive new building on the Dun Laoghaire waterfront in an integrated setting at what had previously been exclusively the Irish Lights Service Yard.
Balancing this was membership of an international group that continually researched for potential awardees of the Blue Water Medal of the Cruising Club of America, which he himself had received in 1984.
ICC “CLUB OF THE YEAR 1989”
At home meanwhile he was steadily rising through the administrative ranks of the Irish Cruising Club, and when he was Commodore in 1988-90, he set such a pace afloat both by encouragement and example, coupled with an up-grading of the Club’s services to cruising generally, that in 1989 the ICC was honoured for the first time as Ireland’s “Sailing Club of the Year”, an achievement that was not to be repeated until 2026.
Twin Commodores. ICC Commodore John Gore-Grimes (left) with his brother Anthony (Commodore HYC) in 1989 when the ICC was the Mitsubishi Motors Sailing Cub of the Year. Photo: W M Nixon
ONE-MAN UNIVERSE
This wide range of maritime interests and activities may seem to be quite enough for a man who was also noted as one of the most diligent lawyers in Dublin. But John Gore-Grimes was a universe, an entire galaxy of interests in which he was absorbed into the cultural life of Dublin and Ireland in various ventures in which he was enthusiastically supportive of his first wife Jan, and then after her sad loss, his breadth of creative and appreciative interests were further encouraged and shared with his second wife Kate.
POETRY AND SONG
The very well-attended Celebration of his life in Dublin this week brought together all his many interests in family, seafaring and cultural expression through prose, poetry, art and music, with reminiscences by longtime shipmates balanced by poetry and song in appreciation of an outstanding figure.
In many ways, he was the embodiment of modern Ireland, with the Grimes family emerging from a long tradition of seafaring out of Skerries, while the surname Gore is to be found in several contexts throughout the country, initially in a forceful but necessary injection of energy.
John Gore-Grimes as a schoolboy, cruising in Scotland aboard his father’s 6-tonner Moonface.
His father Christo Gore-Grimes was a charismatic figure who’d been a university boxing champion in addition to making his mark in the law, but the three children - Anthony, John and Celia - succeeded well in living up to the style and achievement set by their remarkable parent.
HOME IN HOWTH
A house in Howth with boats and sailing were integral to their lives from early childhood, such that John was limited in his enthusiasm for being sent away for schooling at the rising establishment of Glenstal Abbey in Limerick. Indeed, his attitude was such that he celebrated taking the final exam of his Leaving Cert at Glenstal by simply and immediately heading out though the big front gateway, and never looking back as he walked all the way across Ireland, home to Howth.
APPLIED HARD WORK
Yet at Trinity College Dublin he was to reveal his remarkable capacity for applied hard work by taking both his Law Degree and his BA Arts (Hons) in tandem, a signal of the turbo-powered effort of which he was capable, such that over the years he was frequently the first each morning – sometimes by a very considerable margin - into the Gore & Grimes law office in central Dublin.
The Gore_Grimes brothers aboard their Irish Sea-cruising Howth 17 in 1962.
Sailing at Howth had seen the 11ft Heron dinghy used for basic learning, while he took his first steps in cruising to the Isle of Man and then the West Coast of Scotland in his father’s 6-ton sloop Moonface. But as he and Anthony were soon joint owners in the Howth 17 Gladys (built 1907) from 1962 until 1968, when John had a couple of years as sole owner with Anthony having moved into sister-ship Hera. Inevitable the notion of cruising the 17 around the Irish Sea took hold, and they logged a memorable venture including Ardglass and back again to the Isle of Man.
THE FIRST SHARDANA
The cruising bug had firmly bitten by now, and in 1970 John bought the brand-new ready-to-go 26ft van de Stadt-designed Offshore 8 Metre, which he named Shardana after an almost mythical Eastern Mediterranean sea people of heroic achievements.
The first Shardana was a 26ft Offshore 8 Metre which was cruised north to the Faroes and south to La Rochelle.
The Offshore 8 Metre was so utterly glassfibre in concept and construction that some recall that the tiller was the only piece of timber in the entire vessel. And she was no ocean greyhound. Yet in spite of that, simply by “keeping on sailing” he and his shipmates - recruited from a growing crew panel - had soon logged two round Ireland cruises (albeit with very few stops) and then spread their wings over several seasons to the Shetlands to the northeast, St Kilda to the northwest, and La Rochelle to the south.
CELEBRATING FAROESE SHEEP
Their final cruise in the little boat was in 1977 to the Faroes, where regular crewman, cartoonist Bob Fannin, was much impressed by the Faroese farmers’ ability to lower their sheep to any patch of good grass on one of the archipelago’s many vertiginous cliffs, and – more importantly – to retrieve the now much heavier sheep safely back to the top. Being Bob Fannin, his sketch gave all the mountaineering credit to the sheep.
Bob Fannin’s take on the reality of being a sheep in the Faroes.
1978 saw the upwards move to the new Nicholson 31 which was to move the name Shardana into the limelight. Designed by the great and undervalued Raymond Wall, the Nich 31 put a lot of very seaworthy accommodation into a neat little package. But as John Gore-Grimes liked to sail with a full crew, tidiness was everything and very strictly regulated, while for good measure the boat was cleaned from end to end on a daily basis on cruises which now went seriously into higher latitudes, with a round Iceland cruise completed in the first season.
TRANSATLANTIC RACING ONE YEAR, TILMAN MEDAL THE NEXT
For 1979, he was disappointed by the prospect of only one Irish Cruising Club boat joining with the Cruising Club of America to race eastwards across the Atlantic for the ICC’s Golden Jubilee, so he had Shardana shipped to America to race back – the smallest boat in the fleet by an absurd margin. But then he resumed high latitude cruising in 1980 with a storm-tossed venture to Greenland and Jan Mayen which was high-lighted by the award of the Tilman Medal of the Royal Cruising Club.
The award of the Royal Cruising Club’s Tilman Medal in 1980 was the beginning of decades of international recognition for John Gore-Grimes’ high latitude sailing. Photo: W M Nixon
Cruises to the far, far north continued, such that by 1984 the Cruising Club of America’s Blue Water Meal was added to the Shardana honours list, and this added a fresh energy to the growing interaction between the ICC and the CCA led by John Gore-Grimes for Ireland and Bob Drew for America, a mutually beneficial interaction which is, if anything, stronger then over today, with current ICC Commodore Alan Markey a full member of the CCA.
ICC ANNUAL EDITOR FOR TEN YEARS
But back in the early 1980s, it’s worth remembering that in addition to winter planning for each major voyage with his usual meticulous attention, John Gore-Grimes also put in a ten year stint as Hon. Editor of the Irish Cruising Club Annual. And though he had been awarded the Blue Water Medal in 1984, he was really only getting started, and over the years with the Nich 31 Shardana, and then the Najad 44 Arctic Fern, he pushed the limits as the ice receded, particularly in 2003 when Arctic Fern was well and truly stuck in the ice for five totally motionless days.
“Five days going nowhere” – Arctic Fern in the ice
WEST CORK
These many voyages were faithfully recorded on film for the entertainment of audiences back home, where the Gore-Grimes footprint in Ireland had expanded with the acquisition and development of Jan’s dream home at Boothill on the shores of Dunmanus Bay, arguably the most beautiful of all the Rias of West Cork and Kerry.
In Howth meanwhile, their house on the hill - known as The Shack when they bought it, and still known as the The Shack through several upgrades - was to continue as a focus of generous entertainment. This was a reflection of the fact that John Gore-Grimes led his family in kindness and acts – often unknown to others – of heartfelt generosity for those who genuinely needed it.
Three of Ireland’s Blue Water Medallists are (left to right) Paddy Barry, Bill King and John Gore-Grimes.
LASER CELEBRATION
His latter days were blighted by illness, but it was the making of the event when he managed to put in a cheerful and heart-warming appearance in 2024 at the Golden Jubilee Dinner for the Laser Class at Howth, which he had done so much to bring into being fifty year earlier.
Winter racing for Lasers at Howth – John Gore-Grimes played a central role in introducing this, which has resulted in a non-stop HYC Sailing Programme since April 1974.
The name of John Gore-Grimes emerges as having been quietly involved in so many interesting projects and quietly good works that those of us who think we’ve known him for more than fifty years find we may only know the half of it, if that. Nevertheless it has been a gift and a privilege to have known such an exceptional person, and we share the quiet grief of his extended family, his shipmates, and his very many friends in his numerous interests in life.
