Twenty years ago, the thought that the two Conor O’Brien-designed and Baltimore-built ketches – the 1922 42ft world-girdling Saoirse and the 1926 56ft trader-ferry Ilen - would be sailing together at their birthplace in 2023, the Centenary Year of the start of O’Brien’s great pioneering circumnavigation, would have been dismissed as a magnificent but total fantasy. Yet the plans for this unprecedented occurrence are well in place for the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival from May 26th to 28th. And while the re-restoration or re-birth of the two vessels may have involved many people, pivotal to it all has been one man, Gary Mac Mahon of Limerick, who devoted 27 years to bringing this all together.
The restored Ilen during a visit to Galway
His mission achieved, he has now stepped back from direct involvement. But the Irish sailing community – and indeed sailing throughout the world – will be for ever grateful to him, and he is our very worthy Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month” for April 2023.
The re-born Saoirse on a trial sail at Baltimore in February 2023. For convenience of sail handling in short-passage use, owner Fred Kinmonth has retained the main-boom as fitted by later owners. But during the round the world voyage south of the Great Capes in 1923-25, Saoirse sailed with a loose-footed mainsail
