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Displaying items by tag: Pat O'Flaherty

#ANGLING - An "eagle-eyed" angler in Co Cork received a free eye test after his remarkable find of a wedding ring in the water last week.

Seventy-five-year-old Pat O'Flaherty spotted the €400 gold band - complete with its red box - in the River Lee, garnering him a front-page story in the Irish Examiner and a free eye test from Specsavers.

They put me in the chair and did all the tests and told me I have 20:20 vision," he said.

The owner of the ring has yet to be traced, despite much speculation as to how it ended up in the Lee in the first place. If unclaimed, O'Flaherty intends to auction the ring for charity.

In other angling news, West Cork's Courtmacsherry Angling Centre hosted members of the Bradford Sea Angling Club in the UK last weekend.

Poor weather meant that the group was restricted to inshore fishing on the Friday and Saturday, but the Sunday saw a catch of ling up to 23lbs as well as pollack, coalfish, cod, haddock and whiting.

Published in Angling

The Rankin Dinghy of Cobh, Cork Harbour 

A Rankin is a traditional wooden dinghy which was built in Cobh, of which it’s believed there were 80 and of which The Rankin Dinghy Group has traced nearly half. 

The name of the Rankin dinghies is revered in Cork Harbour and particularly in the harbourside town of Cobh.

And the name of one of those boats is linked to the gunboat which fought against the Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising and later for the emergent Irish Free State Government against anti-Treaty Forces during the Irish Civil War.

It also links the renowned boat-building Rankin family in Cobh, one of whose members crewed on the gunboat.

Maurice Kidney and Conor English are driving the restoration of the Rankin dinghies in Cork Harbour. They have discovered that Rankins were bought and sailed in several parts of the country.