BOOK REVIEW:CIARÁN HANCOCK reviews The Unsinkable Entrepreneurby Enda O'Coineen; Kilcullen; €14.95

ENDA O’COINEEN is not one to pass up an obvious moneymaking opportunity. As a key player in bringing the Volvo Ocean Race jamboree to Galway and an avid sailor, what better time to publish an updated version of his autobiography? In it he details the painstaking process of getting the multimillion-euro boat race to Galway and putting an Irish entry into the water.

O’Coineen isn’t just an entrepreneur, he’s also a philanthropist and, fittingly, any profits from the book will be donated to the Ocean Youth Trust Ireland Charity, which he helped to found and which operates two sail training vessels for young people.

O’Coineen explains how true entrepreneurs don’t hoard their wealth. They have such self-belief that “if the proverbial dung were to hit the fan” they could make it all back again. Instead, they circulate their money to other ventures and good causes.

Hailing from Galway, O’Coineen admits to being a rebel as a child and was expelled from secondary school after failing to apologise for a trick played on a teacher.

He kept this rather important detail from his parents for three months. Each morning he would troupe off as usual but, instead of going to school, would head to the docks or a rowing club.

He was eventually found out and had to apologise. “It was the most difficult thing I had ever done in all my life. To this day, I regard it as the best lesson I learned during my school days. When I apologised, it was like a burden had been lifted.”

The time away from class led to O’Coineen doing badly in his Intermediate Certificate but, realising he needed a third-level education to get on in life, he knuckled down for the Leaving Cert, topping his class in honours maths.

Not that he’d left his wild days behind him. Shortly before the Leaving Cert exams, he brought a cow in from a nearby field and put it into the teachers’ toilet, where “it promptly shat everywhere. I was expelled yet again and started a school strike.”

O’Coineen had an eye for making money at an early age. As a 15-year-old he lied about his age to get into the Irish reserve army, then known as the FCA, to get the £100 fee for two weeks of annual camp – “big money for us then, relatively speaking”. The highlight of his FCA career, he says, was a farting competition on duty in Connemara.

O’Coineen had a passion to go to sea and he made it eventually. As a bet, he undertook to cross the Atlantic in a dinghy. He even rang up Sir Anthony O’Reilly, then the head of Heinz in the US, for commercial support.

“Tony, hearing a few words, promptly put me through to a PR guy who, not really understanding what kind of trip I was planning, organised a supply of tinned beans for the voyage. Although the beans were offered in an attempt to get rid of me, I was nevertheless grateful for them.”

After 46 days at sea, O’Coineen capsized just 480km (300 miles) shy of the west coast of Ireland, before being rescued by a Nato aircraft.

After some time on the dole, O'Coineen's first business venture was a boating magazine in 1981 called Afloat.

This proved successful and led to the launch of an even more successful magazine, Security World.

O’Coineen’s career was up and running and has since involved him in finance, telecoms, travel, retail and property in Ireland and, more notably, in central Europe.

His triumphs and disappointments are honestly told and make for engaging reading. He even throws in a funny tale about Charlie Haughey’s philandering in Washington at the time of Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1992.

Through it all, O'Coineen's love of all things sailing deepened and ultimately led him to forming a war cabinet of Irish businesspeople who secured Galway as a docking point for the Volvo Ocean Race while also putting Green Dragoninto the water with significant backing from China. In all, it was a €20 million project that involved Government support of €8 million.

O’Coineen’s book is a light read peppered with anecdotes and useful insights into how to set up a business and make money. It will also make you laugh.

Ciarán Hancock is Business Affairs Correspondent at The Irish Times