THE WRITER calls it "brain haze", because it colonises the mind's eye for several days, writes Lorna Siggins. It might be memory of the first heave of a bow, the rattle of an anchor chain, tidal whirlpools or the tilting of a lonely buoy.
It might be memory of a pair of dolphins, or a mother guillemot shepherding her chick two miles offshore, or a "coronet" of cormorants "perched on a low arching reef".
And "as we drive home, eyes which have become used to looking only at far-off views are irritated," Wallace Clark notes. "The green Irish countryside seems dull. Why? I think it's because it is not moving.
"Seen from a small boat, the sea is a living thing, always in motion, changing with the light, the wind and the action of the tide," Clark says. "It gives health, the chance of adventure and makes more friendships than any other element. As a tree or shrub becomes much more eye-catching and attractive when stirred by a breeze, it is the constant change, the poetry of motion, that is a large part of the sea's charm."
Clark won an award for this contribution to the 2007 Irish Cruising Club Annual, and a second distinction for his account of a trip, at the age of 80, from Rathlin island to the Hebrides.
He published his classic Sailing Round Ireland, his log of a voyage in 10-metre cutter, Wild Goose, in 1976. He republished it in 1990, noting then that the 7,500 km coastline hadn't altered too much in a 15-year interval.
Add on another 15 years, and far more radical changes have occurred - attempts at privatisation of beaches and inlets, pollution and all the worst aspects of developer-led rapaciousness. Currently, at a time of greatest threat to its sensitive habitats, the State's foreshore administration is "floating" between Government departments, while the Marine Institute boasts a little too loudly of the potential of our 220 million acres offshore.
Yet there are still deep pockets of optimism and inlets of enthusiasm, and much quiet, unacknowledged positive activity. Activity including the building of currachs which, in spite of the attractions of fibreglass and high horse-powered rigid inflatables, hasn't quite disappeared. . . yet.
Mention the word, and most people think of the 1930s Man of Aran images captured by film-maker Robert Flaherty or the "sleek canoes" of Kerry's Blasket islands, according to Dónal Mac Polín. Yet their simplicity, resilience and sea-kind abilities have made them very much part of the culture of the northwest which is "only now beginning to disappear", he says in a new history of the craft.
"Sure it was built from nothin'," is how one Dunfanaghy craftsman, the late Bob Robinson, summarised its attraction. It was often the only kind of boat that people could afford to buy or make, Mac Polín notes, although one 19th century official report referred to them as "wretched".
"I'll need to put a new hide on it" is a remark sometimes heard up on the northwest when a fisherman is preparing for the season, even though tarred cotton calico or canvas have now replaced animal hide as the distinctive covering for the frames of hazel rod or steamed oak. Cotton flour or sugar bags were also recycled as covers, or "whatever came to hand!"
Even within one county, there were several different models - akin to several different dialects. The Donegal "paddling" currach or an curach céasla was the smallest of Ireland's working traditional craft, and closest in design to the Boyne "coracle" used many centuries ago on the river.
This boat was generally about three metres long, and was propelled with one small paddle by a man or woman kneeling in the bow.Then there was the Tory currach, which owed its origins to the currach céasla but resembled a clinker-built punt. And the Bun Beag currach, named after the fishing harbour, is the only currach still in general use in Donegal today. The "poor man's trawler" was the Dunfanaghy currach, built by the author from a design provided by Jim McElhinney of the same parish. Talking to Mac Polín, McElhinney recalled how there would be 40 to 50 currachs around Horn Head and Dunfanaghy in the 1930s, fishing up to three miles off land, carrying up to 70 yards of herring net and perhaps up to three cran of herring.
Mac Polín's book includes instructions on currach-building, legends associated with the craft such as that of Bran and the land of women, and the mermaid who drew a boat caught in a gale to shelter off Malin Head. It includes many photographs, beautiful sketches by the author, and a note of warning.
Many of these craft now "lie in bramble-filled gullies, covered by tall grass, largely forgotten,"he says.
A "strong indigenous tradition has collapsed in two generations", and the decline of the whitefish, lobster and crab fishing and banning of driftnetting for salmon could mean "the disappearance of currachs and the smaller punts and half deckers" altogether, he believes. Currach racing has nurtured a revival of sorts, but the "skills and traditions developed over generations are being rapidly lost".
The Donegal Currachs by Dónal Mac Polín is published by Cottage Publications of Donaghadee, Co Down, and is dedicated to Kevin MacLaverty, former director of the Bord Iascaigh Mhara fisheries school in Greencastle, Co Donegal, himself a boatbuilder, musician and circumnavigator of the island in a four-metre boat.
It is available at €24.95 from local bookshops or direct from the publisher at tel (048) 9188 8033, or email info@cottage-publications.com