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Displaying items by tag: Jane Hogan

Tributes have been paid to Galway teacher, photographer and open water swimmer Jane Hogan who died recently at the age of 77.

As The Sunday Independent reports, Hogan, who was one of the Kenny Bookshop family, was a competitive swimmer from an early age.

Her late father Des was first chairman of what was then the Irish Water Safety, after it was set up by the late minister and Galway West TD Bobby Molloy.

As her brother Tom Kenny said at her funeral, “Jane was an avid sea swimmer her whole life, always encouraging others to spend time in the sea which she considered the best medicine for all ills”.

“She was one of the regulars down in Blackrock where she swam daily most of the year round. She referred to her friends there as “The Blackrock Clinic”.

She was a keen photographer and an inspiring teacher at Salerno Secondary School.

Paddy McNamara, a fellow swimmer at Blackrock, Salthill, remembered how she would pull out the camera, and it was ‘stand there, pull in together’ as she got her snap, he said.

He said Hogan was very accomplished, competing in many open water events in Galway and beyond.

Her daily swims took a realistic tack as she would take a break once sea temperatures dropped below 10C, he said.

“Jane would say to me that she would return when we had ‘a week of tens’, as in 10C,” McNamara said.

In a tribute, Galway Swimming Club said that her “dedication to swimming was not merely a personal pursuit but a tradition passed down through the generations”.

“Jane’s influence extended beyond her own accomplishments, as her children and grandchildren continued the family’s tradition, carrying forward the torch of her passion for swimming,”it said.

Read The Sunday Independent here

Published in Sea Swim

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)