At the age of six, Eileen McArthur from Gort na Hullacky, three miles outside Keadue in Co Roscommon, had a dream. "I have a dream," she told her mother Maureen. "What is it a stor?" asked her mother, using the quaint old Irish endearment. " I want to be the world's fastest round-the-world solo female sailor," replied Eileen in her perky way. "Musha why wouldn't you?" said her mother kindly, continuing with the morning chore of peeling a mountain of Kerr's Pinks for the dinner (to be served at lunchtime). It was that long ago in Ireland.
Nothing in her early years marked Eileen McArthur out for sailing fame. Not her background. Not her love of cabbage. Not her job as a butcher's assistant: only the fact that she had webbed feet, could say "Global Positioning System" when she was three and subscribed to four different yachting magazines. Eileen did not care about fame in Ireland. Her country at that time had no great maritime history. Everything about it was associated with failure and loss - the Vikings, the Battle of Kinsale, the Lusitania. What she wanted was to be the toast of France.
Already, in her mind, she could see headlines in Parisian papers. Un Triomphe pour la Petite Eileen! L'etoile des mers! La Petite Fee des Oceans! Her mother pointed out that she was neither a star nor a little fairy and had never seen an ocean: as for petite, she already weighed 10 stone. Eileen took no notice. Seven years old, stuck in landlocked Roscommon, she dreamed her dream.
At eight, Eileen gave her baby brother (Sean Beag) to an Aran Islander in exchange for a small, leaky coracle. Her parents, having 12 or 13 other children to look after, thought it a fair trade. Eileen patched up the coracle, threw it over her shoulder and trudged to a bog-pool four miles away. She had time only for a crash gybe and a short starboard beat before her craft sank. Eileen squelched home, thinking of possible sponsors. Years were to pass before the word "sponsor" entered the language.
Eileen's employer, the local butcher Michael Mor O'Flaherty, sponsored her for a penny a mile. He was under the impression that she was going to do a five-mile run for the Black Babies. He did not know that he had signed as sponsor for a 24,000-mile round-the-world yacht trip, leaving him with a debt of £240, approximately £1.3 million in today's money.
With the money, Eileen bought a state-of-the-art Clinker-built row-boat. The state of the art was actually not very far advanced in Ireland at that time. Eileen adapted the handle of an old rake to serve as mast. She used her bedroom curtains for sails. The main stay of her grandmother's enormous cast-off girdle became her mainstay.
Hailing lifts from passing asses-and-carts, and navigating by the stars, Eileen took her boat to Lough Ree. Locals stared as she flashed from one end of the lake to the other. When the locals grew bored, French visitors, more appreciative of sailing skills, took their place. Soon, the shores were lined with foreign admirers. Tourism started.
The admirers caused problems for Eileen's boyfriend, Eamonn Maol Ruadh O'Concubhar.
He was terrifically jealous. The relationship broke up. Eileen had a new love - her boat, Macushla. She was as happy as the day is long.
Soon, Eileen and Macushla were tearing round Ireland, breaking records almost every day. All three Dublin yacht clubs snubbed her, simply for being from landlocked Roscommon. She cared not.
One weekend, having slightly miscalculated the position of Carnsore Point, Eileen arrived at the Vendee in the south-west of France. Local French sailors instantly took her to their bosom. She moored Macushla in Les Sables d'Olonne, and spent a wild few days in the local bars with her new friends. More Irish people, hearing about le craic, came over. Soon, the entire Vendee region was full of Keycamp and Eurocamp sites catering to self-drive Irish people on their holidays.
Wearying of the scene, Eileen went back to the sea and her boat. By sheer accident, she found herself on the starting line for the Vendee Globe solo round-the-world race. All she had were the clothes she wore, a broken compass and two pounds of Castlebar sausages donated by a homesick Irish student on a cultural exchange.
Macushla got a good start, and a fair wind followed. Every other boat had technology problems; Macushla, having no technology, did not. She won the race in record time, notwithstanding a small leak suffered when dented by an 300-ton iceberg in the Southern Ocean. Eileen got back to Les Sables to find she was now a bigger icon for the French nation than Charlotte Rampling, Jane Birkin and Joan of Arc rolled together. All in all, it was a great day for Eileen, for Macushla and for landlocked Roscommon.