There are reasonably sound scientific reasons for thinking that any living breathing mammal in the Northern Hemisphere will be slightly off his, her or its trolley as the month of March comes upon us. In fact, after the long gloom of winter, there’s something seriously wrong with any sentient being that doesn’t go slightly bonkers in the mad March days.
But what happens towards the end of a summer where all records have been broken for sunlight, heat and warmth? In Ireland of all places, we’re not genetically engineered to withstand such extremes. Yet it’s very hard to sustain a respectable level of Celtic gloom when much of the population seems to be wandering round virtually naked without a care in the world, and then disappears in early afternoon for a very Mediterranean-style siesta.
A different act in the drama – the Byrne clan looking distinctly throughtful as their Puppeteer 22 gets a roll on during a squally run. Photo: HYC
It takes only a very few days of such condition to realise that lunching al fresco can be a very over-estimated pastime, not least because you’ll find your Tuscan-style feast is being shared with some rather spooky insects that have never been seen in Ireland before, and may well be able to sting you to death after they’ve eaten half your lunch.
TATTOOING EPIDEMIC
As for the shedding of clothes, it reveals the epidemic of almost universal tattoing that appears to have assaulted the Hibernian epidermis. We can only comment that while sporting a complicated tattoo does not necessarily indicate a criminal nature, we have yet to see a photo of a conspicuously proven criminal who has not received the extensive services of the tattooist’s needles.
What on earth has everybody been thinking about? The hot summer revealed some weird friends for life.
APRES SAILING
All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that when the photos of the après sailing at the Gibney’s of Malahide annual Classic regatta in mid-August finally reached the screens, it was clear that some sort of collective insanity had befallen the sailing community.
The theme was piracy, something of a way of life along the Fingal coast until it was gradually replaced by privateering and then the exceptionally highly-organised smuggling of Captain James Mathews of Rush in the early 19th Century.
Gibneys of Malahide has been part of the fabric of Fingal coastal life for a very long time
EFFORT AND EXPENDITURE
But what was most notable about the Gibney’s piracy-fest was the sheer effort and expenditure that many people had put into looking the part. Just about everybody - including the race officers - was at the very least wearing a classic pirate captain’s hat. Such headgear may have been fine and dandy when you were striding the poop deck of a full-sized pirate ship. But at Malahide, it can only have been a confounded nuisance if, for instance, you were trying to gybe a Howth Seventeen.
The rig of this race-finishing boat is obviously modern, but the flags and headgear of the race officers are ancient. Photo: HYC
Fortunately now the evenings are conspicuously closing in, and the steady rhythm of the Autumn Leagues is up and running to provide sailing which is all the more cherished because there’s less of it.
PROPERLY SHELTERED MARINA BERTHS
It’s a form of sailing which is largely reliant on boats having properly sheltered marina berths, so the Royal Cork in Crosshaven – where the first marina berths at the club appeared in 1973 – was leading the way in Autumn racing. Nearly ten years were to elapse before Howth had the beginnings of a marina and an Autumn League with it in 1982, but it can be claimed that it was the advent of the minimal-maintenance Squib Class in 1979 that first saw Howth’s Autumn sailing getting going.
October 1979, and the new Squib Class at Howth is having lively racing in pierhead wind-over-tide conditions in the first incarnation of a Howth Autumn League. Photo: Jaimie Blandford
LARGE FLEET NUMBERS IN EARLY DAYS
Either way, the novelty of it all saw some remarkably large fleet numbers in the early days. But in recent years the fleets have been of civilised size, and some will suggest that so much sailing in often perfect conditions was possible during the exceptional summer of 2026 that it’s time to give it a rest.
Certainly there’s any amount of vicarious top level sailing and its attendant political machinations to keep us entertained, with the America’s Cup 2027 at Naples and nearby venues already seeing the usual high level dramatic buildup.
The America’s Cup 2027 at Naples is already building up a head of steam
SAIL GP ATTRACTS DISNEY HOLLYWOD INTEREST
As for the SailGP show, that has now attracted the attention of Tinseltown, with Hollywood thesps Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman bringing the Disney treatment to it in the same way they made small-town Wrexham Football into a must-see sports and human interest drama of silver screens large and small
Experienced Hollywood movie opinion would have it that the surest way to become a billionaire is to become a super-squillionaire and then invest in anything that involves cameras and boats and the people who sail in them. But we shall see.
SailGP in action in Sydney – the word is that it’s getting the Hollywood treatment through Disney with stars Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman
NON-SAILORS OF THE CANARIES
Meanwhile, here’s a thought for the weekend. Every so often the focus of interest swings towards Golden Globe race as its little fleet races through the Canaries and on into the lonely Atlantic. With the evenings closing in here at home, the very fact of the Golden Globe skippers being so alone out on the darkening ocean becomes more stark.
Yet they at least have some control over where they are going, and can know their course. This was not always the case in the Canaries. Although there was a vague awareness that the Canaries were there, it wasn’t until the 15h Century that the first Spanich sailors arrived to become settlers. And they assumed the islands were uninhabited.
But in due course, it was discovered that totally non-maritime people lived up in the mountains, particularly in Gomera. They were the descendants of Berber voyagers, refugees who had come across from North Africa way back in the mists of time in the prevailing and often strong northeast winds. With their primitive boats, they knew that unless they made a spot-on landfall on one of the islands, they were doomed to drift to a long and miserable death out on the ocean.
The Shepherd’s Leap of the Canary Islands. Having abandoned all maritime interests after many losses at sea, the first Berber settlers in the Canary Islands 700 years ago retreated to the highlands, where they developed this technique of getting across the challenging volcanic ravines by pole vaulting.
Thus those who did make it had a habit of destroying their boats, and retreating to the uplands to establish a unique way of life there. This included learning how to pole vault across the many deep and misty ravines. And it also included a shared and willful forgetting of any boat and maritime awareness whatever. Very different indeed from the remarkable selection of characters racing their 1960s-style 36ft foot boats through the islands in quest of the Golden Globe.
