Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Pat Murphy

#hyc – Howth Yacht Club's Pat Murphy presents the life of Asgard, this famous yacht in Irish history from her launch in 1905 to her current conservation in Collins Barracks Museum and the 100th commemoration in 2014. The venue for the special talk is Howth Yacht Club this Wednesday, 18th February at 20:00. The lecture is open to all inlcuding non–yacht club members.  

'Asgard's' 23 day voyage to collect the guns and ammunition for the Irish Volunteers and their landing in Howth in July 1914 is described in detail with unique photographs. Also covered will be the landing of Conor O'Brien's 'Kelpie' in Kilcoole.

Donations, no matter how small, will be welcomed on the night for the Howth 17s Heritage Fund.

Published in Howth YC

#Asgard - Boating historian and round-the-world yachtsman Pat Murphy will once again give his centenary talk on the famous gun-running ship Asgard and its pivotal place in Irish history over the coming days for 2014's Heritage Week.

The series of free talks in north coastal Dublin begins tomorrow (Monday 25 August) at the public library in Rush, moving to Donabate/Portrane (Tuesday 26), Malahide (Wednesday 27) and Baldoyle (Thursday 28).

Each evening's presentation begins at 6.30pm and booking ahead is essential – contact Charlie Quinn at Fingal County Libraries at [email protected] or call 01 8708464 or 01 8708414.

Published in Tall Ships

Further to your article on Dunmore East and its very unwelcoming attitude towards leisure craft let me relate a very bad experience we had there.

After nine years circumnavigating and having visited 39 countries and receiving a warm welcome in each my wife and I returned to Ireland by way of Dunmore East. Having crossed the Bay of Biscay we had planned to land in Kilmore Quay from where we had departed Ireland from. However due to a southerly gale and having hove-to for 4 hours during the night south of the Saltees we decided to divert to Dunmore East at first light, what a mistake.

We were well aware of the bad reputation of Dunmore East but after 100 hours at sea and with winds of over 30 knots we were very tired and decided for safety reasons to chance berthing there.

We rafted up with two other visiting yachts, they had also ran for shelter, and later in the morning when the Harbour Master walked down the Harbour he shouted at us making it VERY clear that we were not welcome, this despite the weather outside. Speaking to a neighbouring fisherman what we heard him say about us is not worth repeating, his language was disgraceful. We left the following morning.

Since returning the most popular question we are asked is "where is the nicest place you have been to" to which we reply "if we were to go around again there is no place we visited that we would avoid except Dunmore East". I think that sums it up.

Looking to the future, I have heard there is a new Harbour Master by the name of Harry McLoughlin and that he has already shown that he intends to make lovely Dunmore East a much more welcoming Harbour.

We wish him every success and all visiting leisure craft should show their appreciation by co-operating with him.

Looking forward to a return visit to Dunmore East.

Pat & Olivia Murphy

Published in Your Say
Tagged under

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