Epic voyage provided experience the young crew will never forget

They are older, wiser, they have lost a father and their older brother has taken his Dail seat. Yet no one would have been more delighted and excited than the late Hugh Coveney to witness the safe return of four of his seven children into Cork Harbour this weekend.

"And he'd be very relieved to see his boat back!" quipped the skipper, Rory, after an emotional welcome on water and in Crosshaven.

The £1 million target may have been a mite ambitious - Sail Chernobyl has raised £400,000 - but it was only as the voyage progressed that the main target was "turned on its head", said the boat's first skipper, Simon Coveney.

"The awareness raising became far more important - and in the long term, of far more value," he told The Irish Times. "We had hoped to, but never did get a big sponsor on board, and yet the involvement of the schools and the 1,200 daily hits to the website are of inestimable value."

Ironically, it was their father who was most at risk, even as the five Coveneys bid farewell to both parents following a Christmas reunion in the Caribbean. That was in early 1998. Two months later, they were exploring the wonders of the Galapagos Island when they received an email to phone Cork urgently. They flew home, catching glimpses of their lonely vessel through the plane window as they left the Galapagos and spent several months back with the rest of the family in Cork. "Never a backward glance," their father had often said, and so they decided to continue with the project, as he would have wished.

Simon handed the helm to Rory and remained to run the family farm at Minane Bridge. He visited Belarus with Adi Roche, of the Chernobyl Children's Project, and found the experience overwhelming; and he received an overwhelming endorsement from the Cork South Central electorate when he won the by-election called after his father's death and took the Fine Gael seat.

His brothers and sister heard of his success in Singapore. Several days previously, the ketch had crossed the Equator into the northern hemisphere again, and had also collided with a large tree trunk without sustaining any visible damage.

In Thailand, they competed in the King's Cup regatta, and were disgusted with their performance. But then few of the competitors were carrying such ballast and "racing in their home".

It was also one of the low points in the resumed venture, Rebecca Coveney admitted at a press conference in Crosshaven at the weekend. Up till then, they had had their rows - "like any family, about the little things". At this point, she really felt she wanted to come home. "We ran out of things to say to each other."

Rory agreed: "I remember one day when we didn't talk to each other for 12 hours."

The one significant injury on board was to the chef. Tony, a student in hotel management and a wizard with a small cooker and very cramped galley space, cut his arm badly taking in sails. His sister did the needful and sewed it up again.

Apart from that, their main challenges involved fickle weather, troublesome fish, hungry mosquitoes, severe heat, bitter cold, 60-second showers, sporadic food shortages, resident cockroaches, cabin fever, torn sails and over-enthusiastic customs men.

In Australia, where Goldie was given its first hull scrub in 14,000 miles, customs officials confiscated the onions and garlic on board. In parts of Asia and Africa, the crew was shocked by their first real experiences of human suffering and deprivation.

The closing stages of the 26,000 mile journey were some of the worst, they say, particularly a long hard battle in heavy seas and headwinds up the Red Sea. They agree the greatest challenge was mental, rather than physical.

"But we've seen each other laugh, we've seen each other cry," Rebecca remarked. "We may have seen a bit too much of each other, and we'll miss each other now!"

The Sail Chernobyl website is at http://aardvark.ie/ccp/sailchernobyl. Donations can be still be lodged to the Sail Chernobyl fund-raising account at Allied Irish Banks, South Mall, Cork, account number 11100050.