What goes round, come round. Way back in 1972 we were doing a very leisurely family cruise with a Galion 22 in West Cork (small family then), and went in company with Dermod Kennedy and his ketch Richard of Baltimore out to North Harbour on Cape Clear. There, he could dry out alongside for some necessary hull work while conveniently having Cotter’s bar nearby to help pass the time spent waiting on the tide to fall and rise.

Dermod Kennedy at work on his newly-painted Richard at Baltimore more than 50 years ago. Photo: John Hinde Collection

The job took several tides, but we were in no hurry, and in one of the many leisurely conversations, the topic intensified with different views on a new Irish sail training vessel to replace the small and ailing Asgard of Erskine & Molly Childers fame.

At the time, I was getting to know the first of the new 72ft Robert Clark-designed ketches that were being used to build up the Ocean Youth Club fleet, and would sail with Fred Dovaston on the OYC’s Irish Sea-based Taikoo.

Thus I was keen to promote the idea that one of these fine ships – many of which continue to sail today as handsome and able private yachts – would probably provide the most economical and efficient route for Coiste an Asgard to commission a replacement for the first Asgard. But Dermod was having none of it.

The restored ketch Zenara was formerly one of the Ocean Youth Club fleet.

STUFF-AND-NONSENSE OF FORE-AND-AFT RIG

“Stuff and nonsense to fore-and-aft rig” he declared. “Ireland’s new sail training vessel should be a conspicuously handsome clipper-bowed ship, setting as many square sails as possible” he continued with a frighteningly determined tone. “And she should have the hull painted dark green so that everyone would know this was Ireland’s flagship when she came into port”.

And so it came to happen. Dermod’s passionate viewpoint was reported in a late-autumn edition’s gossip section in Afloat magazine, and Jack Tyrrell of Arklow read it as the Christmas festivities – about which he had very mixed opinions - ominously approached.

CHRISTMAS MISSION

He happily announced to his family that they’d only see him for the Christmas dinner itself during the holidays, as this absolutely essential work project on preliminary drawings for a proper Irish sail training ship would involve all his spare time in re-working a proposal plan for a 110ft barquentine that he’d created for the great Captain Tom Walsh of the Irish Maritime College way back in 1954.

Came New Year 1973, and the first drawings for an 84ft sail training vessel emerged from the almost impenetrable pipe tobacco fug that was the Tyrrell drawing office. We reproduced them in the February-March 1973 edition of Afloat.ie, and around ten o’clock in the morning on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th1973, the phone rang and a boisterous voice bellowed down the line: “That ship will be built, mark my words”.

Jack Tyrrell (and pipe) with the model of Asgard II and the new ship under construction in Arklow.

ST PATRICK’S DAY DECISION

It was the newly-appointed Minister for Defence, Patrick Sarsfield Donegan of Monasterboice in County Louth, already well into celebrating his personal Saint’s day. But somehow or other, despite the economic doldrums of the 1970s with several stoppages, the new Asgard II - an 84ft brigantine - was designed and built by Jack Tyrrell in a new purpose-built shed in Arklow, and was commissioned by a subsequent Minister for Defence, Charlie Haughey, in March 1981.

She was quietly and proudly Ireland’s much-loved and much-voyaged Sail Training Brigantine for 27 years. But as she was basically built to standard timber fishing boat specifications, albeit with high quality timber, as 2001 approached increasing concern was expressed about the expectations of longevity for the single-skin hull, as comparably-constructed fishing boats were automatically de-commissioned after twenty years.

Asgard II powering along. But after twenty and more years of this, her hull was getting tired.

STEEL HULL?

Thus when the spars and rig were completely renewed under the expert direction of her commander, Captain Colm Newport, in the early 2000s, suggestions were made that as soon as possible, all Asgard’s re-usable interior furnishings and fittings should be transferred to a new and preferably double-skin steel hull.

It was amazing the resistance this idea met, shot down by those who reckoned that a steel Asgard II would have none of the soul of the original vessel. Thus it’s hardly surprising that my own suggestion that they should retain the Arklow link by having the new hull built double-skin in aluminium - as that was what they were using to build boats in Arklow by this time - was blown clear off the planet with nuclear force.

EXEMPLARY “ABANDON SHIP” OPERATION

Either way, it somehow wasn’t a total surprise in September 2008 when news broke that Asgard had sunk in the Bay of Biscay, apparently after striking a semi-submerged object. All hands were saved in an exemplary abandon-ship operation, but the cruel irony was that she was on her way for an expert refit in a specialist yard in La Rochelle. Questions were later raised about the condition of the bottom planking.

But even if that were the case, with the planks then replaced, she still would have been in the unsatisfactory single-skin configuration. Yet as it is, Asgard was on the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, and after diving inspections, the insurance were prepared to pay the government the money. But with the economic mega-crash of 2008 upon the country, there were absolutely no votes whatever in any TD or Minister proposing that the insurance money be used as a deposit to provide a proper replacement.

COISTE AN ASGARD FOLDED INTO SAIL TRAINING IRELAND

Coiste an Asgard was was reorganised into the body now known as Sail Training Ireland, which assigns trainees to some smaller craft with training programmes in Ireland, or into the sail training ships of other nations with a livelier maritime tradition. These are places where well-funded Trusts run sail training vessels, with levels of institutional support not currently available in Ireland, which we have seen as recently as during the past week, with Denmark’s classic square-rigger Georg Stage on stylish display in Dublin Bay.

The Sail Training Ship Georg Stage is a good example of what can be dne with a fully-funded and experienced Trust ownership and management.

There have of course been many in Ireland who feel that we should have a proper sail-training setup with at least one labour-intensive square rig ship, and no-one has given more time and energy to it than Enda O Coineen with his Atlantic Youth Trust.

MULTI-PURPOSE SHIP

The AYT has aspired to a multi-purpose sailing ship in which sail training would be just one of many marine and environmental training modules provided. But when a 164ft wooden sailing ship of roughly the right proportions and type became available in Scandinavia four years ago, she was snapped up and brought to Ireland to be re-named the Grace O’Malley using expected fund-raising programmes, including once-promised government grants from North and South.

The Scandinavian sailing ship that was briefly Grace O’Malley has now been sold on.

But those government grants were originally supported by long-gone government ministers. In today’s febrile times, there are even fewer popular votes in sail training, and the Scandinavian sailing ship that was briefly Grace O’Malley has been sold on.

TAKING THE FORE-AND-AFT RIGGED ROAD

Meanwhile, Atlantic Youth Trust has been reborn as Shackleton Atlantic, and at this fresh fork in the road, sail training in Ireland has taken the more travelled track of the fore-and-aft rig.

Yes indeed, 54 years after Baltimore’s seagoing Shaman Dermod Kennedy affirmed his Great Truth that Sail Training is not really Sail Training unless it involves square rig and going aloft, the Shackleton Atlantic Trust is taking on one of the 2013 Tony Castro-designed cutter-rigged Clipper Venture 70s, as the main Clipper fleet is being replaced by new 72ft ultra-mod boats designed by Nigel Irens and Paul Murphy.

The RORC’s Club Boat, the Sun Fast 3600 Griffin, is a Round Ireland entrant

It has moved a stage near official finalisation as the entry list for next month’s Round Ireland Race from Wicklow now includes – in addition to the already-entered Clipper 68 Courageous (Clipper Ventures No 9) – the Castro-designed Clipper 70 Spirit of Shackleton (Enda O Coineen & Bobby Beggs, RIYC).

With Sail Number CV35, the newly-acquired Shackleton is a reminder of the now-considerable fleet of large ocean racing cutters that Robin Knox Johnston and William Ward have brought into being since founding Clipper Ventures in 1995.

THE DON PARR/QUAILO STORY

The trouble is that in taking a fresh glance at the growing entry list for the Round Ireland Race from Wicklow 2026, there are new distractions that lead us astray from giving proper attention to worthy entries such as the Spirit of Shackleton.

For instance, right after Spirit of Shackleton at Entry No 47 is Quailo III, Entry No 48, a Nicholson 55 now owned by RORC Rear Commodore Andrew Tseng. But back in the day – and it was a long way back – Quailo III was built for Don Parr of Manchester, who had started to make his mark in offshore racing on the Irish Sea with Quailo, one of the then-new Nich 43s.

The classic Nich 55 Quailo III was originally built in 1971 for Irish Sea sailor Don Parr

He’d found his new passion in life, and took to the offshore racing programme in a big way while they took to him, as he became Commodore and later Admiral of the RORC, and with Quailo III, was a successful Admiral’s Cup team member in 1973. Subsequently he bought Max Aitken’s Fastnet Race 69 “almost winner”, the 63ft Crusade, and cleverly secured himself the best berth in Cowes, right in the middle of town, yet private.

THE MAIN MAN HAS ARRIVED

However, when we were looking at the entry list a week ago, it only got as far as No. 44, with Stephane Gras’s 18 metre Neptune from France. But since then Entry No 45 has posted, and the Round Ireland 2026 is now fully alight at top wattage, as No 45 is Alexis Loison with the new-as-can-be Class40 Groupe Reel.

He has twice won the Fastnet sailing two-handed, including last year’s Centenary Special with its huge fleet, and then a month later he emerged as winner of the Figaro Solo before re-appearing in action in the Rolex Sydney-Hobart in December, co-skippering the overall winning two-hander Ming River.

Alexis Loison with one of his Fastnet trophies. His Class40 Groupe REEL with be the newest boat in the fleet when the Round Ireland Race starts from Wicklow on June 20th.

The very new Class40 Groupe REEL, designed by Marc Lombard who also created Pwllheli’s 46ft super star Pata Negra, represents a fresh challenge for Loison’s sailing skills. She is built by Neo Sailing Technologies, and the Round Ireland Race will be the first major contest in her maiden season.

The presence of Alexis Loison with Groupe REEL will give Class40 critical mass with seven boats and counting. All power to Pam Lee of Greystones but now French-based, as she has been steadily beating the drum for the Round Ireland as the ideal Class40 event.

FIFTY ROUND IRELAND ENTRIES @ 08-05-26