Displaying items by tag: Gareth Craig
Mirror Euro Pics HERE!
Photographer Gareth Craig has loaded new images from the Mirror European dinghy championships in Sligo to the Afloat gallery. Click HERE.
Photographer Gareth Craig has loaded new images from the Mirror European dinghy championships in Sligo to the Afloat gallery. Click HERE.
In 1923-25, Conor O'Brien became the first amateur skipper to circle the world south of the Great Capes. O'Brien's boat Saoirse was reputedly the first small boat (42-foot, 13 metres long) to sail around the world since Joshua Slocum completed his voyage in the 'Spray' during 1895 to 1898. It is a journey that O' Brien documented in his book Across Three Oceans. O'Brien's voyage began and ended at the Port of Foynes, County Limerick, Ireland, where he lived.
Saoirse, under O'Brien's command and with three crew, was the first yacht to circumnavigate the world by way of the three great capes: Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope and Cape Leeuwin; and was the first boat flying the Irish tri-colour to enter many of the world's ports and harbours. He ran down his easting in the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties between the years 1923 to 1925.
Up until O'Brien's circumnavigation, this route was the preserve of square-rigged grain ships taking part in the grain race from Australia to England via Cape Horn (also known as the clipper route).
In June 1923, Limerick man Conor O’Brien set off on his yacht, the Saoirse — named after the then newly created Irish Free State — on the two-year voyage from Dun Laoghaire Harbour that was to make him the first Irish amateur to sail around the world.
June 1923 - Saoirse’s arrival in Madeira after her maiden passage out from Dublin Bay
2nd December 1924 - Saoirse crossed the longitude of Cape Horn
June 20th 1925 - O’Brien’s return to Dun Laoghaire Harbour