The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association Diamond Anniversary sail down the River Liffey and out into Dublin Bay was completed in fine style on Saturday lunchtime (May 27th), thanks to some gentle easterly winds and warm sunshine.

The 60th anniversary weekend at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club in Dublin Port brought together an eclectic mix of gaff riggers from across the Irish Sea, from vintage dinghies to Cornish Crabbers to a 52-foot Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter, a Manx half-decker a 1936 gaff ketch and a Galway Hooker from Connemara.

(From left) Sean Walsh's Tir na Nog of Howth (and Kinsale), a Francois Vivier designed Stir Ven 19 called Wren (centre) and 52-foot Letty, a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter sailing together on Dublin Bay in celebration of the Old Gaffers Diamond Jubilee Photo: Afloat

As previously reported by our WM Nixon, the diamond jubilee gathering for the Old Gaffers was fully booked for some time. It features a more compact programme without the usual Leinster Trophy, which will get its own standalone in August. Afloat.ie has more on this story HERE.

Master Frank rounds DBSC Seapoint buoy during the Old Gaffers Diamond Juiblee celebrations on Dublin Bay and the River Liffey. Although not built as a Morecambe Bay Prawner, the Manx half decker Master Frank has many attributes from the traditional Nobby design. This classic boat is very special and a good friend of the Nobbies. With a 38ft overall length, 24ft 6in on the deck and a draft of 5ft 3in she is based at Ramsey (IOM). Master Frank fished for many years in the Irish Sea from Whitehaven as 64WA before returning to the island and being registered as RY95 (Ramsey) Photo: Afloat

After breakfast (8.45am) on Sunday morning, 28 May, there will be a currach demonstration and lifejacket testing with the RNLI (10am-12pm). Skippers will get a briefing at noon or the parade of sail, which heads upriver along the Liffey from 1.30 pm via three lifted bridges.

The closing ceremony back at the club (with bar food available) is scheduled for 6pm.

Read also: Port of Dublin Sees Traditional Sail and Modern Sea Transport In Harmony

 (Above and below) The 52-foot Letty on Dublin Bay at the Old Gaffers Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Letty was built as a Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter. The builder was E Rowles of Pill, Bristol and she was built in 1905. She is of timber carvel construction, with larch on oak frames. The vessel was recorded as being transferred from Grimsby to Dublin in 1934 and being converted to a fishing vessel named ROAMING. She was found in Arklow in the mid-1970s and has since been fully restored and is on the UK's National Historic Ships register Photo: Afloat

The Klevia has been restored and is traditionally rigged as a gaff ketch. She hails Ffrom Anglesey in North Wales, and was built in Esbjerg, Denmark, in 1936 for fishing the North Sea  Photo: Afloat

(Above and below) There were a variety of smaller tan-sailed gaffers including Drascombes and Cornish Crabbers participating in Saturday's light air racing from the River Liffey out into Dublin Bay for the Old Gaffers Associations Diamond Jubilee celebrations at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club Photo: Afloat 

A Francois Vivier designed Stir Ven 19 called Wren sailed by Graham Files from Wexford Photo: Afloat

(Above and below) The Galway Hooker Bláth na hÓige—was built on Leitir Mealláin (Lettermullan island) off the Connemara coast in the nineteenth-century 

The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association have updated the programme of events for their 60th anniversary weekend at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club in Dublin Port later this month.

Booking in commences Friday 26 May at 4pm ahead of the opening ceremony at 7pm, followed by an evening of dinner (from 7.30pm) and entertainment (from 8.30pm).

There’s a relatively leisurely start to Saturday 27 May with a half-hour for breakfast at 8.45am before the skippers’ briefing for racing on the bay at 10am. First gun will be at noon for the afternoon of racing, with the prize-giving at 6pm. Dinner is at 7pm followed by music from 8.30pm.

After breakfast (8.45am) on Sunday morning 28 May, there will be a currach demonstration as well as lifejacket testing with the RNLI (10am-12pm). Skippers will get a briefing at noon or the parade of sail, which heads upriver along the Liffey from 1.30pm via three lifted bridges. The closing ceremony back at the club (with bar food available) is scheduled for 6pm.

As previously reported by our own WM Nixon, the diamond jubilee gathering for the Old Gaffers has been fully booked for some time and features a more compact programme without the usual Leinster Trophy, which will get its own standalone in August. Afloat.ie has more on this story HERE.

Ten years ago, when the Old Gaffers Association’s Dublin visit was a highlight of their Golden Jubilee Cruise-in-Company, it was a very crowded and festive series of events based around Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club in late May 2013 that included the inaugural staging of the race for the DBOGA’s Leinster Trophy. Pernickety observers may have taken sardonic pleasure in pointing out that the Leinster was won by a Bermuda-rigged boat. But as the victor was the 101-year-old Ringsend-built Ainmara owned by Dickie Gomes from Strangford Lough, it was a very popular result.

Racing hard for the inaugural staging of the DBOGA Leinster Trophy in Dublin Bay with (from left) Raven from the Netherlands, the 101 year old Ainmara from Strangford Lough which went on to win, and Cinne Mara, the Dutch-owned steel version of a Galway Hooker. Photo: Dave Owens

OLD GAFFERS DIAMOND JUBILEE AT POOLBEG IN DUBLIN PORT

This year, it’s the Old Gaffers Diamond Jubilee, and they’re returning to Poolbeg again, this time from 26th to 29th May, with the official section compressed into Saturday, 27th and Sunday, 28th May. The available places have already been fully-booked for some time, so the club is at capacity, and the only problem is going to be dealing with more casual visitors or those who operate on the system of “But surely you knew we were coming? We were here before”.

With the more compact 2023 programme, the Leinster Trophy is not featuring - it will be staged as a separate event in August. But the large and very varied fleet will have enough in their hands, as the OGA Cruises are rolling events in which boats come and go at various stages, and only part of the fleet will be going the whole way through the Caledonian Canal and back to the “Grand Concluding Meet” in the River Orwell in Suffolk on the 4th to 6th August.

Old Gaffers fleet in Poolbeg for their Golden Jubilee in 2013, with two of the Howth 17s coming in from their race from Howth. Photo: W M Nixon

One interesting aspect of it all is that the 2013 presence of sundry traditional gaff-rigged craft on Ireland’s East Coast has largely relocated westward. Practically all the Galway Hookers of every size, which used to be a familiar sight in Dublin Bay, are now to be found in Galway City or Kinvara or in the sacred territory of Connemara itself, as the very handy motorway to Galway makes for an enormous difference in going west.

THE SOUTHWEST CALLS

The southwest calls too - former OGA International President Sean Walsh of Dun Laoghaire is now based with his Heard 28 Tir na nOg in Kinsale, while one-time DBOGA mover and shaker Darryl Hughes has become very much Crosshaven-based with his classic 43ft 1937 Tyrrell ketch Maybird.

Sean Walsh’s Heard 28 Tir na nOg – seen here racing in the 2013 Leinster Trophy – has been re-located from Dublin Bay to Kinsale. Photo: Dave Owens 

Thus around or about Dublin Bay, while there may be nearly a hundred boats which definitely qualify as gaffers, they don’t really come under the general Old Gaffer heading. For they’re the One-Designs of the Dun Laoghaire Water Wags, the Howth 17s, and the Dublin Bay 21s, and they live for racing, whereas the raison d’etre of a true Old Gaffer is simply to exist in historically authentic seagoing order.

There’s potential for a culture clash in this if they all try to get together in one place for one event. But another feature of the programme in 2023 is that there’s so much going on that highly individualistic boat types – and the even more highly individualistic people who sail them – can find an event which best suits them.

BALTIMORE WOODEN BOAT FESTIVAL

Thus while Dublin is buzzing on May 27th & 28th, so too is Baltimore in West Cork, with the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival centred around the same weekend, and starting to get underway on the Thursday with additional cultural events. However, the highlight is expected to come on the Saturday, when world-girdler Conor O Brien’s restored 56ft ketch Ilen and the new re-build of his circumnavigating 42ft Saoirse – both products of Liam Hegarty’s famous boatyard on the River Ilen at Oldcourt – are expected to sail together officially for the first time. That is definitely a complete once-off which no-one who is interested in Conor O’Brien or West Cork or traditional vessels will want to miss.

The new-built Saoirse sails for the first time in Baltimore. Photo: Kevin O’Farrell

Baltimore is certainly flexing its muscles as a magic setting for traditional and classic sail, as the Howth 17s – celebrating their 125th Anniversary in 2023 – will be having a Regatta Week based on Baltimore from June 24th until July 1st, but meanwhile, their 125th season gets underway on Tuesday, May 4th with the 125th Special Race.

The restored Ilen off Steamboat Quay in Limerick. She will sail for the first time in company with her “smaller sister” Saoirse at Baltimore during the Wooden Boat Festival from May 27th-29th. Photo courtesy Ilen Project

HOWTH 17s’ 125TH IS VERY PRECISE

Why be so specific about a date? Well, back in 1898 when the first five newly-built boats famously sailed from boatbuilder John Hilditch at Carickfergus in Belfast Lough over the 90 open sea miles home to Howth in mid-April, it took a while to get themselves together and think seriously about a programme, so it was May 4th 1898 before the Howth 17s had their first proper race.

The Howth 17s may revel in their home waters, but they’re going to Baltimore for one of the big 125th parties. Photo: W M Nixon

The precision in dates is important. For although the similarly-sized and also 1898-built Royal Yorkshire One-Designs may have modernized themselves out of all recognition, whereas the Howth 17s are still as originally designed by Howth’s founding Commodore W H Boyd, the Yorkshire ODs didn’t have their first race until June 6th 1898, and that gap of one month and two days is all-important in assigning the ultimate seniority.

Thirty-three days in 125 years, and it matters enormously – now there’s dedication for you.

The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association will host an illustrated lecture next week by Joe Ryan reflecting on the coastguard in Ireland over the last 200 years.

Joe spent 12 years at sea as a radio officer responsible for the safety of lives at sea. He spent 15 years as a computer engineer and software advisor, and 20 years as a search and rescue co-ordinator with the Irish Coast Guard before his retirement in 2014.

He has been a supporter of the Maritime Institute and their lectures since 1995, and he gave their keynote lecture in 2014 on the coastguard from 1822 to 2014, “Hands Around the Country”, which later became a PDF booklet, as previously reported on Afloat.ie.

Joe says this upcoming lecture is not a rehash of his previous address, and will instead reflect on key moments of the Irish Coast Guard and its predecessor bodies over the last two centuries.

The lecture takes place this Thursday 23 February at 8pm at the Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club. All are welcome and donations for Howth RNLI may be made at the door. Early attendance is recommended to be sure of a seat.

The talk will also be streaming live on Zoom for those who cannot attend in person (details on request from [email protected]).

Cruising Club of America Blue Water Medallist Paddy Barry and Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association President Adrian Spence have taken on the Arctic cruising challenge in a variety of craft over the years.

But in 2022, they combined forces to sail Adrian's more modern 47th ketch to high latitudes, and found that modern life can provide some extra frustrations.

All will be told at Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club in the Port of Dublin this Thursday (January 26th).

The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association is now the central organisation for the OGA in Ireland, following the absorption of the Northern Ireland branch, which supplied the re-elected President, Adrian "Stu" Spence.

His home port is in Ringhaddy Sound in Strangford Lough, but on Saturday, he brought together an Annual General Meeting in Dublin Port which reflected the all-Ireland nature of the DBOGA despite its apparently location-specific title, and the election of a large committee further reflected the gathering's countrywide interests.

Honorary Secretary Darryl Hughes of Crosshaven stood down after several years of sterling service, which included steering the Association through the Pandemic in a busy style with a comprehensive series of Zoom sessions involving a wide range of maritime topics, while combining a successful ongoing fund-raising drive for the Howth lifeboat

Darryl is succeeded by Peter Tobin as Secretary, while Dave Neilly takes over from Jimmy Murphy as Treasurer as the DBOGA heads into a busy 2023, which will include the extensive celebrations of the now-international Old Gaffers Association's 60th Anniversary.

The 2023 DBOGA Officers & Committee are: 

Adrian Spence - President
Peter Tobin - Secretary
Dave Neilly - Treasurer

Committee:

Dennis Aylmer (Dun Laoghaire)
John Elston
Joe Foley
John Ferguson
Negley Groom (Poolbeg)
Darryl Hughes (Crosshaven)
Gerry Keane
Paul Keogh (Clondalkin)
David Lewis
Cormac Lowth
Ed Maggs (Kerry)
Jimmy Murphy
Paul Rowe
Mark Sweetnam
Chris Trevithick
Seán Walsh (Kinsale)
Johnny Wedick
Michael Weed (Donegal)

A recording of the AGM is below

The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers (DBOGA) two-day regatta at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club on the River Liffey was also a casualty of the weekend's nor'easter.

Disappointingly, the planned Parade of Sail on the capital's river had to be cancelled in the gusty winds. 

As regular Afloat readers know, the strong winds also cancelled the entire Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) Saturday Programme at Dun Laoghaire. The big seas on Saturday led to a reduced start for the annual Lambay Race but nevertheless vintage edition as part of the successful staging of the three day Wave Regatta at Howth Yacht Club. 

Afloat understands plans are now afoot to incorporate the cancelled DBOGA Poolbeg event into September's Howth DBOGA Round the Island (for the Leinster Plate) outing in early September. 

Meanwhile, the season will now see a cruising emphasis for PYBC with members heading off on summer cruises. The PBYC yacht Paradiso has already departed for Norway via the Faroes.

How can you make sense of a sport which features at least 143 World Championships? It’s a question which was first asked many years ago when the then International Sailing Federation (now World Sailing) accorded official “International” status to two more globally-distributed racing boat classes, thereby entitling them to stage their own World Championships.

Admittedly nowadays a growing class really does need genuine international strength to be so recognised. But some venerable classes still cling to that distinction despite being very much a leftover minority interest surviving over many decades in just a few countries. Thus while top level international sailing moves on with new versions of multi-class world championships in addition to the Olympics, these supposed relics of a bygone era cling on to their status - and the inalienable right to stage their own World Championship - with the all the determination of super-charged limpets.

The J/109 Mojito (Vicky Cox & Peter Dunlop, Pwllheli SC) will be contending the J/109 Easterns as part of Howth’s Wave Regatta

Add to that the fact that sailing is a highly individualistic vehicle sport in which many participants sail regularly but don’t actually race at all, and you begin to appreciate how difficult it is to explain the basics of sailing’s structure, even to the most favourably-inclined enquirer.

But even by the standards of sailing’s great mysteries and complexities, this Bank Holiday Weekend is in a league of its own, though a comparison with the Superbowl is only to give an impression of the potential scale, as the ’Bowl is very much venue-focused whereas a typical hyper-busy Irish sailing weekend is literally all over the place.

Lough Ree YC – current MG Motor “Club of the Year” hosts Clinkerfest 2022

In addition to its fine clubhouse, Lough Ree YC – which is on a six acre site – provides extensive berthing, haulage and marina facilities

Add to that the fact that some boats and crews are oddly reluctant in this post-pandemic phase to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again, and sometimes numbers are less than you’d expect. Yet equally, there are organisations – such as the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association – which seem to have leapt into top-gear action from the off.

The Shannon One Designs – celebrating their Centenary Year – will be the stars of Clinkerfest. They attract sailors from every background – sailing this boat is Olympic Silver Medallist Annalise Murphy, with her mother Cathy Mac Aleavey, an Olympian in 1988, in the crew.

Anway, if it’s variety which is the touchstone, we do well with the Wave Regatta under way at Howth, the Clinkerfest getting going at Lough Ree Yacht Club, and the Dublin Bay Old Gaffers two-day regatta at Poolbeg.

Add to that the usual Dublin Bay SC Saturday racing at Dun Laoghaire – a regatta in itself – the continuing movement in Galway Docks with the fleet in the Round Britain & Ireland Race 2022 being moved on after their separate 48-hour stopovers, plus regular club racing at many centres, and we get increasing life on the water.

Two of the new Cape 31s tuning up off Howth, with David Maguire’s Valkyrie in the foreground, and Dan O’Grady’s boat beyond. Unfortunately a bout of Covid means that O’Grady will not be competing in Wave. Photo: Annraoi Blaney

Nevertheless, we’re not out of the woods yet. As the fleet gathered for yesterday’s first race of Wave, conspicuous by her absence was Dan O’Grady’s new Cape 31, which had been keenly anticipating a three way debut with David Maguire’s Valkyrie and the Wright brothers’ boat. But Dan the Man has contracted Covid, and is out of circulation and the weekend’s racing with it. Unfortunately, we cannot print the first expletive reaction to this frustrating news on a website with a family readership, but it burnt the paintwork.

The saga of the building and sailing of the traditional Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan by Clondalkin Community in west Dublin goes back nearly thirty years. And though the story has regularly featured in Afloat.ie,
the various lockdowns had made it difficult to properly mark the end of a special era at Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club in Dublin Port when Naomh Cronan was moved west to Galway Bay.

But with normality returning, back in January this year it was announced the international Old Gaffers Association had recognised the outstanding contribution made by Paul Keogh over many years in keeping
the Naomh Cronan ideal alive and active and sailing, until the time had arrived for the boat to be transferred to the traditional boat group in Galway City.

Naomh Cronan, the successful outcome of a very special Clondalkin community project. Photo: W M Nixon

The OGA's supreme award for contributions to traditional and classic sailing is the Jolie Brise Cup, named in honour of the most famous gaff cutter in the world, the pilot cutter Jolie Brise built by Paumelle of Le Havre in 1913. Jolie Brise's working career was brief, as she was superseded during World War I of 1914-18 by steam and diesel-driven craft. But she then switched to a successful career - which still continues - as an offshore racer, long-distance voyager, and sail training ship of global renown, and the linking of Paul Keogh and the Naomh Cronan with this remarkable craft is a well-earned recognition of a very special effort.

OGA President Patrick Vyvyan-Robinson came to Dublin for the presentation to Paul Keogh, and in recognition of Dublin Port's special relationship with the traditional boat movement, which will be further celebrated next year when the Old Gaffers Association's 60th Anniversary Cruise-in-Company features a Dublin visit.

Jolie Brise - the most famous gaff cutter in the world gives her name to the OGA's premier award

The possibility that stellar jockey Rachael Blackmore, the winner of the Grand National in 2021 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup this year, might just be descended from a noted Dublin nautical family has emerged from traditional boat enthusiast and maritime historian Cormac Lowth’s research into the development of the Ringsend fishing community. He reveals these intriguing insights from time to time to several organisations, including fellow members of the Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association at their gatherings in the hospitable Poolbeg Yacht & Boat Club, one of the focal points of modern Ringsend’s friendly interaction with Dublin Port.

Two hundred years and more ago, with the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, the seas of western Europe were becoming safer for fishing fleets to go about their trade. And the port of Brixham in southwest England was the Silicon Valley of fishing development in its day, leading the way in the speedy improvement of boats and equipment to enable a rapid expansion of its fishing areas from 1818 onwards.

Brixham today is mainly for tourists, but 200 years ago it was a developmental powerhouse of the fishing industry

This soon brought the new state-of-the-art Brixham trawlers into the Irish Sea, where they needed a base, and it was Ringsend at the rivermouth of Dublin’s River Liffey that proved most hospitable. So much so, in fact, that many of the Brixham fisherman – the all-powerful skippers and ordinary crewmen alike – married into Ringsend families to add new surnames and fresh vitality to the community. 

INTERACTION BETWEEN DEVON AND DUBLIN

This interaction and regular connection between Ringsend and Brixham lasted for around a hundred years, ended by World War I in 1914 and the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. But by then, those distinctive Devon surnames like Biddulph, Ebbs, Upham and Blackmore were very much thought of as pure Ringsend, even if in the bigger picture - with Ringsend developing its own fishing industry with boat-building attached – the Murphy family had become dominant, with their mighty Ringsend-built fishing cutter St Patrick of the 1887 being possibly the largest vessel of the Brixham type ever built.

The Murphy family’s St Patrick at Ringsend in 1889. Possibly the largest vessel ever built of the Brixham type, she was constructed by the Murphy family and successfully fished by them for many years.

But while Murphy is Ireland’s most frequent surname, Blackmore ranks something like 3,500th, which makes anyone thus named very special indeed. Nevertheless, there seems to have been a small but strong strain of Blackmores in Tipperary for some time, so Rachael Blackmore’s people may have got there by some means other than the Brixham-Ringsend route.

OPEN HOUSE AT POOLBEG

Either way, it is exactly the kind of topic for discussion enjoyed by traditional boat enthusiasts when they get together to talk of this and that, and on the evening of Friday, May 6th it’s going to be open house at Poolbeg Y&BC as the Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association and their friends gather for the public presentation to Paul Keogh (an Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month” in January) of the international Jolie Brise Trophy for his 25 years of selfless devotion to keeping the community-owned Clondalkin-built Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan in good order and in full action afloat.

This return to normal life (after a remarkable two years-plus period in which the DBOGA have been Zoom-meeting pathfinders) will continue in the June Bank Holiday Weekend, with the three day DBOGA Regatta (aka The Liffey Regatta) at Poolbeg from June 3rd-5th, a remarkable festival in a working port.

The “City Haven” – Poolbeg YC & BC in Ringsend with its marina contrasting with the modern curves o the Aviva Stadium