Learning the life aquatic

ROUND-THE-WORLD skippers hauling heavy rigging in the tumblehome hulls of wooden hookers . . . diminutive Optimist dinghies navigating the coastline . . . mackerel in the bay and a tapestry of sails of all sizes set against the backdrop of the Burren . . . There were days during this year’s Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway when it seemed as if the entire island had just discovered the Atlantic.

Competing crew families enrolled on the travelling “Volvo school” and scouted Salthill rockpools for crabs while their older siblings took to the water with sailing instructors; the Even Keel project introduced boating to people with disabilities; Galway Bay Sailing Club hosted a spectacular junior parade and several regattas; and the dockside was transformed into a waterside classroom for hundreds of primary pupils.

It was a fever, and one which may not have been felt with quite such intensity since one Genoese visitor by the name of Columbus is reputed to have called to the port in search of charts. But what’s the remedy now if one is smitten by the boat bug at a time of shrinking payslips, if one still has a regular payslip at all?

A seaside celebration this weekend in Baltimore, Co Cork, may provide an answer. “Recession-proof” is how RTÉ newscaster Bryan Dobson describes the Glénans sailing school, which is marking its 40th birthday in Ireland this month. He has spent the past 15 years plying this 7,500km coastline with the organisation, and without ever having bought a boat.

“If you haven’t been lucky enough to get a start through your parents, sailing can seem pretty inaccessible to many,” Dobson says. “It’s not always the case of course, but there are few enough places where you can learn as an adult, and then continue on without having to invest large amounts of money.”

The Glénans programme preceded, and has much in common with, the national sail-training initiative run by Coiste an Asgard – but at dinghy and coastal cruising level. Named after the Glénan archipelago off southern Brittany, the Franco-Irish movement was founded in 1947 by the late Philippe and Hélène Viannay, who had been members of the French Resistance.

The Viannay vision involved healing wounds and encouraging social rehabilitation through contact with the sea. German forces had placed an exclusion zone around the French coastline during the war years, which added an extra dimension to the challenge.

“For us, the seas were empty and free,” Hélene Viannay wrote in 1990. “With our little cruising boats, we could venture where we willed, there was always space in the harbour, foreign moorings were deserted, everywhere a friendly welcome. At that time, Brittany was extraordinarily beautiful.”

The organisation expanded beyond France, initially to Corsica and then to Italy and Spain. A 12m Bermuda rig vessel, La Sereine, was one of its first cruising boats, and it clocked up some 240,000km at sea between 1952 and 1998. In 2005, it was restored and has been declared a French national monument.

Within two decades of founding Europe’s largest sail-training movement, the Viannays had become increasingly disillusioned with the impact on the French coastline of the post-war economic recovery. Marina development had limited accessibility, and increasing bureaucracy and regulations were “souring their dream”, Hélene Viannay recalled.

"It was then we started to dream about Ireland," she told Afloatmagazine back in 1976. She and her husband – a distinguished journalist who was later to become a close friend of the former Irish Timeseditor Douglas Gageby – had heard stories from that "green" island. These were stories of "good and bad weather, sailing conditions which were sometimes difficult, and stories of the most beautiful countryside".

The first Irish base was set up in a disused railway station in Baltimore by Dermot Kennedy in 1969. Four Mousquetaires – 6.48m yachts – were sailed 515km from France to Baltimore to form the initial training fleet. Two years later, a second base was set up in an old British coastal artillery post overlooking Laurence Cove on Bere Island in Bantry Bay (since sold).

Quidnunc, alias the late Seamus Kelly, was an early convert, extolling the merits of the organisation in his Irishman’s Diary and paying tribute to Bord Fáilte for its early support. The Glénans/Viannay philosophy was to nurture confidence and personal development, and from the outset trainees and instructors were encouraged to teach each other the skills they had acquired.

This approach extended to Ireland, where stagiaresoften joked about the "Glénans spirit" as they rigged boats, scrubbed toilets and cooked dinner during some of the best holidays of their lives. Participants ranged from postmen and women to doctors and nurses to accountants and judges to teachers-turned-politicians such as Green Party junior minister Trevor Sargent.

“It was and is a great leveller,” Dobson says, as one of a number of journalists who first learned through an introductory course in west Cork that sheets didn’t always have to be on beds.

This writer learned how to tack, capsize and luff up alongside University of Limerick lecturer Breda Gray, while meteorologist and RTÉ weatherman Vincent O’Shea and Louise McKenna, deputy director of the State’s forensic science laboratory, were also participants.

Dobson recently trained as an instructor and will teach voluntarily on a course this summer. The volunteering ethos is nurtured by a system of credits, which can help pay towards the cost of further training. “It’s an ethos whose time has returned in this economic climate,” he believes.

Ruth Ennis from Glénans, points out that half of the State’s sail trainers currently qualified to teach instructors have been Glénans graduates. “All our courses are approved by the Irish Sailing Association and Royal Yachting Association, and we offer all disciplines now in dinghy, catamaran, windsurfing, day-sailing and live-aboard cruising,” she says. Teenagers are accepted from age 14, and can even enlist on courses where they learn to sail and learn to speak French.

Photographer Bob Hobby was general manager for nine years.“You never knew who you would meet,” he says. “During one course on Collanmore in Clew Bay, it was only when we were sitting at the bar that evening that we discovered we had been teaching none other than Dustin the Turkey. We laughed so much that we didn’t sleep a wink.” See www. glenans.ie

GOING OVERBOARD?

NO WETSUITS, the most basic wind gear – early stagiares on Glénans sail-training courses in Ireland rarely turned up with the sort of labels now seen on marinas. One recalled that one of his first lessons was “never to wear blue jeans on a boat”.

Glénans graduates provide a sort of “crew bank” for boat-owning members of some of the finest waterfront establishments. Essential qualifications include knowing how to sail a little better than many boat-owners, but without showing it, turning a deaf ear to more enthusiastic skipper commands, and taking a light-hearted approach to sailing club rules and regulations.

A classic example – and the very antithesis of the Glénans spirit – are the regulations issued by the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dún Laoghaire. Wearing of sailing gear in ground-floor rooms is “prohibited at all times” in the Royal Irish, and children under 12 years of age are also not permitted in the ground floor “except on regatta days”. Last year, the club decided that members should revert to a “more formal dress code” in the dining room. This was defined for members as “jacket and tie for men and conservative dress for ladies”.

Exceptions would be made during evening sailing dinners or mid-week lunches, when the dress would be “smart casual”. The Royal Irish defines this as “jacket required, tie not required, polo neck replacing the collared shirt (if preferred), no jeans, sneakers, polo shirts or T-shirts . . .” Any breach of this approach is regarded by the club as an “infringement”, and it is expected that any members found at fault will respond in a manner that is “sympathetic and conductive to correcting the infringement”.