Challenges faced by owners and builders of the Galway Hooker are explored in a new documentary due to be broadcast on TG4.
The distinctive traditional sailing workboats of Galway have been built and maintained by generations of boatbuilders and many of them have remained in family ownership for over 120 years.
In the documentary, owners describe how they are experiencing the most difficult period yet for the Galway hooker community since their revival in the late 1970s.
Sailors from Galway Hooker Sailing Club feature in Ó Lámh an tSaoir, a new documentary due to be broadcast on TG4 on Easter Monday
“Maintenance costs are a part of life for the owners of these wooden boats, but the availability of suitable and affordable timber is currently having a disastrous effect on the repair and restoration of these unique boats,” TG4 says.
“Sourcing suitable timber in Ireland has become next to impossible and the importation of timber has become so expensive that the delays involved now means that the majority of the bád mór fleet is on dry land instead of at sea racing in the various annual summer regattas,” it says.
There is also a question over the future of the local boatbuilding craft, it says.
“While many of the current crop of boatbuilders came through an Údarás na Gaeltachta initiative in the late 1990s, hardly any have entered the trade since then,” it says.
“This shortage and lack of young boatbuilders now, unfortunately, threatens the very future of the Galway hooker,” it says.
Ó Lámh an tSaoir will be broadcast on TG4 on Easter Monday, April 21st, at 8.30 pm.
