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Displaying items by tag: SV Tenacious

A group of Transition Year students stepped into a strange new world when they disembarked from a month at sea on a tall ship sail training voyage.

The eight teenagers arrived in Cork Harbour on Tuesday 7 April on the SV Tenacious, which had sailed since early March from the Caribbean to the Mediterranean — with little knowledge of how daily life has changed in Ireland in the intervening weeks.

As Antonia O’Rourke of Viking Marine tells Afloat.ie, all the boys on the mixed-ability voyage with the Jubilee Sailing Trust have previous sailing connections.

Conor Galligan and Conor Walsh, for instance, both enjoy racing Lasers in Dun Laoghaire and Cork respectively, and are also qualified dinghy instructors hoping to put that training into practice this summer.

Charlie Kavanagh and Aiden Colbert are no strangers to sailing, either — the latter with cruising experience, while the former has sailed with his family.

Perhaps the best equipped was Sam Duncan, of the National Yacht Club, who joined a tall ship voyage last year with another charity — the Rona Sailing Project — which he enjoyed so much he was looking to expand his offshore miles while also qualifying as a dinghy instructor this season.

But while their prior experience on the water set them in good stead for a month on the high seas — honing essential seafaring skills along with 40 other crew — nothing could prepare them for what awaited as they landed in Cobh this week.

The SV Tenacious at anchor in Cork Harbour on TuesdayThe SV Tenacious at anchor in Cork Harbour on Tuesday

Concerns started to brew just days into their voyage as the scheduled host port in Greece was closed to visiting boats under strict measures against Covid-19.

Parents of the young crew, two of whom have underlying health conditions, were relieved by Jubilee Sailing Trust’s immediate decision to return to the UK, via the Azores and Cork Harbour — with no shore leave granted for the safety of the crew, who were essentially coccooned from the pandemic throughout.

The last leg of that journey, traversing the North Atlantic from the Azores to Ireland, presented a genuine challenge to the young sailors, with three days of gale-force winds to contend with.

But a different challenge faced them on arrival in Cork in Tuesday, when the eight Irish crew were said to be taken aback by the ‘new normal’ of social distancing and the shutdown of the economy.

Robbie Byrne from Greystones said: “It was a big shock coming back to Ireland today and seeing people wearing masks and everyone being told keep their distance and of course driving home, the roads were empty, there was no one out.”

The Irish Times has much more on the story HERE.

Published in Tall Ships

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.