These days when nearly every event of sailing significance seems to require a wave of publicity beforehand and a veritable tidal wave of that same publicity when it’s under way, it’s like a breath of fresh air when people just go out and achieve a major voyage, and then quietly return with little or no fuss.
Admittedly when husband-and-wife crew Paraic O’Maolriada and Myra Reid (they’ve been married 49 years) got to the Galapagos Islands back in 2012 during their six-year circumnavigation from Kinsale with the Amel Super Maramu Saol Eile, they buffed up their Facebook page a bit. But it was only to keep a bit better in touch with friends who knew what they were about, and the theme of the entire exemplary cruise was quiet and competent voyaging to many places, some of them very exotic.
In fact, when you look at the places they’ve been, it’s remarkable that their toughest passage was southward across the Bay of Biscay at the very beginning of their 43,000 mile Odyssey. And when they returned to Kinsale on Saturday July 16th, it was for a quiet welcome home by family and friends. We hope they don’t think we’re going a bit over the top in making them “Sailors of the Month (Cruising)” for July 2016. But we reckon what they’ve done is utterly inspirational.
