The 1929-founded Irish Cruising Club may be a thriving yet homeless organisation. But with a devoted and active national and international membership with their own regional loyalties, there are many clubs in Ireland which would happily and appropriately provide the premises in which the ICC could receive the MG Motor ship’s wheel trophy for being Club of the Year.
The link between the sail power, which is central to Irish Cruising Club activity, and the clean power, which is at the heart of the new range of MG Electric Vehicles, is obvious. Yet the fact that the presentation ceremony was hosted in the 1831-founded Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire deserves further explanation.
The 70ft Fife cutter Hallowe’en, Line Honours winner a hundred years ago in the Fastnet Race of 1926 when the event was annual, alongside at the 1831-founded Royal Irish Yacht Club’s 1850 clubhouse in Dun Laoghaire, the world’ oldest complete purpose-designed yacht club building. Photo: W M Nixon
But as the ICC’s Centenary approaches in 2029, it is remembered with increasing clarity that although the ground work in setting up the club was primarily done by the legendary first Fastnet Race 1925 pioneer Harry Donegan of Cork from 1912 onwards, with Billy Mooney of Howth and later Dun Laoghaire coming aboard from 1922, the idea only gathered real traction when noted veteran Dun Laoghaire cruiser-racer Herbert Wright agreed to support the concept of the new club by accepting the role of founding Commodore.
A sailor of the old school – Herbert Wright RIYC, Founding Commodore of the Irish Cruising Club
FORTY HEBRIDEAN CRUISES
Herbert Montgomery Wright (1862-1942), a Ballsbridge-dwelling Dublin stockbroker, was an active lifelong member of the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, and by the time he took on the new ICC position, he had made more than 40 voyages to his favourite cruising ground, the West Coast and Hebridean islands of Scotland, which developed his friendships in the 1909-founded Clyde Cruising Club.
He also was central to one of the major developments in Dublin Bay, as he was a founder of the Dublin Bay Class, with his new boat, Estelle – DB21 Class Number 3 – being built for him by Hollwey of Ringsend in Dublin in 1903. Estelle is sailing again, having been restored in the DB21 re-birth project of Hal Sisk ICC/RIYC and Fionan de Barra (NYC).
Herbert Wright both raced and cruised Estelle, and wrote about it in the sailing magazines, which in turn led to him becoming a member of the 1880-founded Royal Cruising Club, most senior cruising club of all.
The Dublin Bay 21 Estelle, originally built in 1903 for Herbert Wright and now restored by Ha Sisk & Fionan de Barra, greets the Conor O’Brien ketch Ilen as she arrives in Dublin Bay on June 20th 2025, for the exact Centenary, marked by the ICC and RIYC, of O’Brien’s pioneering global circumnavigation south of the great Capes. Photo Afloat.ie/David O’Brien
But equally important for the nascent ICC was the fact that he had many business and sailing contacts in what had become Northern Ireland after Partition in 1921, and he brought in members from there. It was one of Wright’s new northern member, James Faulkner of Belfast Lough, who presented the Club with its premier trophy, the Faulkner Cup, which from 1931 onwards was simply the award “for the best cruise of the year”.
ESPANOLA THE FOUNDING FLAGSHIP
By the time the ICC came into being, Herbert Wright had long since been the owner of the 15-ton Bond of Birkenhead cutter Espanola. Though Harry Donegan’s 17-ton Charles E Nicholson cutter Gull was marginally larger, it was Espanola that was the official flagship as the founding flotilla of five yachts made their way westward from Cork until – with all assembled in Glengarriff - the ICC was brought into being with a dinner in Roche’s Hotel Glengarriff on July 13th 1929.
Espanola as she was in Herbert Wright’s ownership, as sketched in 1929 by Billy McBride, first Hon Treasurer of the ICC, who worked as an artist in the famous Harry Clarke stained-glass studio. Courtesy ICC
FIRST AMERICAN CONTACT
By next day the little fleet had been augmented by the serendipitous arrival of the American ketch Seven Bells at the conclusion of a Transatlantic voyage, thereby starting a friendship with the Cruising Club of America which was never stronger than it is today.
Then although the 1930s may have been an economically difficult time, the ICC slowly developed as it manifested the characteristics that define it today, as it encourages the development of proper cruising as being something much more than simply “sailing without racing”.
GENDER BLIND
For instance, the ICC was always gender blind, so much so that by 1934 the first woman awardee, Elizabeth Crimmins of East Ferry on Cork Harbour, had her name inscribed in the Faulkner Cup. She was followed in 1939 by Daphne French, while in modern times Maire Breathnath of Dungarvan has been a pace-setter in ICC cruising and a Faulkner Cup awardee, while also doing much voluntary work in compiling the substantial ICC Annual.
Some of the attendees captured at a serious moment when the Theory of Sailing Club Function was being expounded in the RIYC. Photo: Paul Sherwood
SAILING DIRECTIONS
Another function the club saw as being essential was the production of Sailing Directions for all the coasts of Ireland. Harry Donegan pioneered this with directions for southwest Ireland, Billy Mooney was soon on the job with the East Coast, and a Limerick member, David Tidmarsh, the awardee of the Faulkner Cup in 1933, spent much of his 1934 summer in sailing research on his yawl Foam covering the rugged West Coast north of the Blaskets, in those days Terra Incognita for many sailors.
By bringing together these often sparsely located cruising enthusiasts at social gatherings, the ICC promoted its branch of sailing in a very effective way, such that now membership is a matter of a carefully monitored selection process, and today ICC Commodore Alan Markey of Howth presides over a busy organization that has expanded in every area of interest.
Commodore Alan Markey finding an MG EV fits very well. With fellow HYC member Dave Cullen now heading Irish Sailing, Howth controls the levers of power on Ireland’s sailing scene. Photo: Paul Sherwood
That said, the Howth members have an extra spring in their step these days, as sailing in Ireland is in the unusual position of having both the Commodore of the ICC and the new President of Irish Sailing, Dave Cullen, being longtime members of Howth Yacht Club.
CONOR O'BRIEN RETURNED TO CENTRE STAGE
Be that as it may, the scope of ICC activity was further indicated when the club’s publishing group, led by Alex Blackwell of Clew Bay in Mayo, produced the augmented 8th Edition of Conor O’Brien’s classic book Across Three Oceans. The Centenary of the completion of his “into the unknown” global circumnavigation on 20th June 1925 was celebrated in a series of events organised by Cork-based ICC Rear Commodore Sally Cudmore to bring the ICC flotilla – led by the Conor O’Brien ketch Ilen - to Dun Laoghaire and the RIYC on June 20th 2025.
Conor O’Brien’s pivotal book Across Three Oceans was published in an up-dated 8th Edition by an ICC group led by Alex Blackwell in time for the Centenary of his global voyage in 1923-25.
Thus among the leading attendees at this week’s ceremony were David Delamer (former Chairman of Irish Lights) and his wife Charlotte, nee O’Brien, the grand-niece of Conor O’Brien. O’Brien is the almost mythic legend of sailing and serious voyaging man who – thanks to the ICC’s up-dating of his seminal book Across Three Oceans – is now acknowledged by the French-based International Cape Horners Association as being the clear pioneer of “modern” yacht roundings of Cape Horn.
All this shoreside activity went on during 2025 while out on the water, many ICC members made cruises long and short in their own unaccompanied boat in the classic style. Others made the scene in the busy Cruise-in-Company of all the leading cruising clubs in the Hebrides in July, while the ICC’s members also had their own rallies in southwest Ireland and northwest Spain, in addition to neighbourhood fleet meets.
Founding flagship Espanola as she is today, owned by Martin Birch and based at Port Dinorwic on the Menai Straits.
WIDE-RANGING OCEAN-VOYAGING
In contrast to that, the club includes leading members of the wide-ranging ocean Cruising Club, founded in 1954 by Humphrey Barton, an ICC member who was awarded the Faulkner Cup in 1935 for successfully completing a round Ireland cruise in the ancient cutter Dauntless in appalling weather in the climatic style we seem to be enduring this Easter weekend.
The 1897-built Belfast Lough No 1 Class OD Tern was at the founding of the ICC in 1929, rigged as a yawl for cruising. She is now restored to orginal cutter form and Falmouth-based.
Certainly there were early hints of it at the award ceremony on Thursday evening (April 2nd), but within the RIYC’s historic and elegant clubhouse, the mood was warm as ICC members savoured their success and looked forward to the 2026 season, which will include the usual local rally-cruises in places like Galicia and southwest Ireland, but will also have the challenging highlight of a Cruise-in-Company to Norway organized by Dun Laoghaire member and Water Wag sailor Frank O’Beirne.
LIVING RELICS
Meanwhile it’s of interest to note, as the 2029 Centenary looms ever more clearly on the horizon, that two of the five boats in the “founding flotilla” of 1929 - Espanola herself and the 1897-vintage former Belfast Lough No.1 class Tern – are still in healthily-restored existence, as too – but needing work done - is the first awardee of the Faulkner Cup in 1931, the little Mamie Doyle-designed Marie of 1894 vintage.
The 1894 cutter Marie - first awardee of the Faulkner Cup in 1931 – in restored form at Glenarm in 2008 with Peter Ronaldson of Belfast Lough – ICC Commodore 2008-2011 – on board
