The Skibbereen boatyard where Ireland’s last trading schooner was painstakingly restored has been immortalised in a new book of photography, as The Irish Times reports.

Hegarty’s Boatyard, on the River Ilen near Skibbereen, is the last surviving traditional boatyard in Ireland and remains a hive of activity, mostly servicing the local fishing industry.

Its bigger jobs include the Cill Airne, a 1960s cruise ferry tender refurbished as a restaurant and bar that’s now moored on the Liffey in Dublin, and the ketch Saoirse — “the first boat to take the tricolour around the world in 1923”, according to Liam Hegarty — which is hoped to be ready for Baltimore’s Wooden Boat Festival next year.

But the yard that’s now the subject of a ‘photographic essay’ by Kevin O’Farrell is probably best known for Ilen, the rebuilt sailing ship that carried Limerick’s flag across the Atlantic to Greenland last summer and was more recently recognised at the best restoration project of 2019.

The Irish Times has much more HERE.