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Gordon Reid has rejoined RYANI as development officer to cover Mary Martin’s maternity leave.

An architect by profession, Reid is an experienced watersport enthusiast who has also worked in club and coach development with Rowing Ireland.

The Belfast man has a background in both rowing — he has been captain at Lagan Scullers’ Club for 25 years — and dinghy sailing.

He is an active sailor and instructor at East Down Yacht Club, Killyleagh Yacht Club and NI Sea Cadets, having competed in multiple Northern Ireland and international events.

Gordon Reid of the RYA in Northern IrelandGordon Reid is a director of the NI Sports Forum

But he has also been involved with powerboating, windsurfing and kayaking — not to mention club administration, as Commodore of East Down Yacht Club.

He serves as director of the NI Sports Forum, and is a member of the Sport Matters Implementation Group for Participation.

Commenting on his new role, he said: “It is great to be back and getting up to speed with the new ways we can support individuals, clubs and centres as they seek to engage and hold onto members in these difficult times.

“I look forward to meeting representative of clubs and centres over the coming weeks, and I am keen to support members in their work, so that we can all become better at what we do.”

Published in RYA Northern Ireland
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#ROWING: Lagan Scullers’ Head of the River, scheduled for Saturday in Belfast, has been cancelled. “The forecast was bad and getting worse,” said race director Gordon Reid this afternoon. The weather system could have made the course dangerous. Cork Head, however, is set to go ahead at the Marina on Saturday, with an entry of 280 crews. The high water levels on the Corrib have led to the early cancellation of Galway Head, which was set for St Patrick’s weekend.

Published in Rowing

 

# ROWING: Rowing Ireland has announced the appointment of Gordon Reid as a full time Belfast-based Club and Coach Development Officer.

Reid will be responsible for leading the development and improvement of the Rowing Ireland club development system within Northern Ireland, including delivery of a range of services to support clubs and coaches.

This is a new position and will add to the Coach Education and Club Development work already being done by Pat McInerney, Coach Education Officer.

Reid has been a director of Rowing Ireland, and a board member of the Ulster Branch.

“I am delighted to accept this position with its focus on working with clubs and coaches, and I look forward to helping them to develop skills, systems and to achieve results,” he said.

Hamish Adams, the chief executive of Rowing Ireland, said: “We are delighted to appoint someone of Gordon’s calibre to this extremely important role. Gordon’s administration and practical experience will be an asset to not only the Northern Ireland Club’s but rowing in general.”

Published in Rowing

Ireland's Trading Ketch Ilen

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Designed by Limerick man Conor O’Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926, she was delivered by Munster men to the Falkland Islands where she served valiantly for seventy years, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.

Returned now to Ireland and given a new breath of life, Ilen may be described as the last of Ireland’s timber-built ocean-going sailing ships, yet at a mere 56ft, it is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

Wooden Sailing Ship Ilen FAQs

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

©Afloat 2020