ALL along the western seaboard, over the summer months, the festivals of the Boats are celebrated. Last weekend in Carraroe, Co Galway, it was the turn of Feile Chaladh Thaidhg, one of the more recent of these celebrations it was started in 1992 by Paraic Mac Donnncha and Sean Kinneavy and the usual hard working, committee, to raise funds for the Aran Islands' lifeboat.

"It costs in the region of £5,000 to get the event off the ground," explained Sean. "We have to compete with the other festivals in the matter of prizes, cups and trophies. Some of them offer trips to New Orleans and to Boston to race against Irish Americans. And then There are side events to be considered, like the choosing of the Queen of the Feile - Aine Ni Ghriofa from Caladh Thaidhg itself is this year's winner football matches, five a side soccer, the ancient bicycle race, arm wrestling...

But the real action is down at the jetty, where on Friday night an open air Mass was celebrated to bless the undertaking. The sky was the colour of steam, a high tide was running, pennants flapped in the breeze and the magnified voice of the celebrant lent solemnity to the serried ranks of head bowed people. All soon changed, however, when the priest was replaced by a pair of musicians, braziers were started for the barbecue, swimmers queued up blue and shivery but game and all manner of craft began criss crossing the grey surge of sea.

I stood at the pier wall and watched Bob Quinn take pictures of the boats, those at rest and those in motion. Not a movie camera this time for Bob, but rather a series of freeze frames. Gleoiteogai beaga, smaller versions of the Hookers, were at anchor but seasoned and weather beaten mariners were lining up to be ferried out to them. A catamaran made its cheeky presence felt. Dinghies heeled into the wind, the twosomes of crew looking young and anxious and magically quick at ducking and weaving.

Someone made an announcement, a horn was sounded and four pre-pubescent girls came determinedly bobbing towards the jetty steps. Their male counterparts were then rowed out to the starting post, the most demonstrative of them being urged to stay out there if he were coming in last.

Hilari Nic Caba, who runs a craft shop in Carraroe, talked of how these festivals were a way of preserving traditional means of boat building and, of course, the sailing of them. The currachs are made of canvas and tar on a wooden frame and they can't be pulled out of the surf and onto the shore, she explained. This accounts for life centipede like manner of walk employed by their crews, when they bear the craft aloft on their heads. One lives and learns...

BY now the small boats had been readied and, at another blare of the horn, they were away, tacking into a stern southwestern. A couple of old men stood beside me and talked in Irish about the merits of the various craft. They were not over lavish in their praise, things obviously being better in their day. The boats moved out around the furthest buoy, their butterfly sails dipping and swaying, while nearer in, the crowd became muted at the grace and beauty of the bad mor the Tonai as it made its stately way up from Sruthan, another pier further down the coast.

Later, on Sunday, there were currach races, those specially made for such competitions long and knife like, the more standard ones broader and slower. The three man crew had been practising since March and, when they stripped off their singlets, their bodies were whip cord hard and pulsing with muscles. At the horn blast, the oars dipped and the boats surged forward like greyhounds out of their stalls.

Finally, with the nobility of ancient monarchs, the badai mora took to the sea, silent except for the shouts of their crews and the creaking of the rigging. As late as the 1960s these boats carried turf, livestock and passengers out to the Aran Islands. Sean Kinneavy recalled a time when, as a young boy, he had sat on a mound of turf, heading for the islands, the wind in his face, the sea running clear and fast all about him.

Those old ways are gone now, but a resonance remains in festivals such as Feile Chaladh Thaidhg, in the splash of oars, the crack of sail and the calling voices of those who go down to the sea in ships uniting the present and the past.