Although she often took the brunt of the boom with her older brother at the helm, LORNA SIGGINSrelishes her early memories of sailing. Here she meets a new generation of hardy sailors
THE FIVE-SHILLING PENGUIN paperback is a little dog-eared now, but Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazonswent around öur house on winter evenings as the distinctive smell of resin and fibreglass emanated from the garage. Over the weeks and months, the plywood "pram" took shape – my brother's first Mirror dinghy.
The craft had arrived in a kit which had been advertised as an affordable boat. It was assembled using simple tools, held together with tack and tape or stitch and glue. My father and brother painted it navy blue and named it Bilbo, after Tolkien's character in The Hobbit.
Ned – better known to Irish Times readers latterly as retired Army intelligence officer and military analyst Col E D Doyle – was our instructor on Blessington lake. Being the older sibling, my brother rarely surrendered the helm, and I took the brunt of the boom on some of our wilder tacks. While I relished the adventure, my brother preferred the competition. Still, Bilbotransported us to an otherworld on Poulaphouca reservoir.
It all changed one day, when we were selected to represent our club at provincial championships in Dún Laoghaire. Here, our fellow sailors had showers and changing rooms, cags and wetsuits – whereas we relied on old shorts and anoraks, donned hurriedly in the boot of a Renault 4. On approaching the committee boat before the first race out in Dún Laoghaire harbour, I lost my footing and fell into oily water, eliciting screams and roars of delight among fellow competitors.
The intimidating experience of encountering kids with brand-new sets of sails and gear is something distinguished sailor Dame Ellen MacArthur has written about in her autobiography. It was partly her determination to overcome that which drove her to the pinnacle of her career, setting world records for lone circumnavigation. Currently, as the Volvo fleet arrives in Galway, MacArthur is taking 85 young people around Britain’s coast on a four-month voyage. Most of her crew are recovering from cancer or leukaemia.
In Galway, the Ocean Youth Trust has taken a group of young people sailing this past week; yesterday, a junior band of “pirates” performed a parade of sail off Salthill; while the Even Keel project is introducing the joys of dinghies to people with disabilities.
That’s the beauty of boats – it is not always about money, equipment and the best of gear; building one’s own wooden dinghy is a rite of passage that the young owners of the latest GRP Optimists don’t experience. The national sail training programme run on the now-sunken Asgard II, and incorporation of sailing in the school curriculum in Schull, Co Cork, along with a new Irish Sailing Association (ISA) module in adventure sailing, all provide alternative routes for those in love with wind, wave and water.
At the same time, Ireland is also producing junior sailors to international standards, with six national squads in various classes supported by the ISA. Top names reflect a good geographical spread: Philip Doran (15) of Courtown Sailing Club, Co Wexford; Tiffany O’Brien (18) from the Royal NI Yacht Club and Ballyholme Yacht Club; Oliver Loughead (16), also of Ballyholme and the Royal Ulster Yacht Club; Fiona Daly of Tralee Bay Sailing Club; and Jane Butler and Jennifer Andreasson of Royal St George Yacht Club.
The national organisation’s youth and development manager, Rory Fitzpatrick, agrees that it is “hard to reach top level on a shoestring”, and parental involvement is essential. It is a “lifestyle choice”, he says.
JANE BUTLER AND JENNIFER ANDREASSONof Dún Laoghaire's Royal St George Yacht Club are top young female sailors in Ireland in their 420 dinghy class, and have been ranked in the British top 10. Both secondary-school pupils (at Mount Anville and Alexandra College, Dublin, respectively), they have just returned from a two-month training stint in New Zealand. Their target is the youth world championships in Brazil in July, and as a result will miss the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway.
“We had been following the race on the internet and in the newspapers, and we were on the volunteer programme for Galway. Then we got a new training schedule . . .” explains Jennifer, a little wistfully. The granddaughter of a Swedish ship designer, Jennifer took up sailing at the age of seven in an Optimist, or Oppie, dinghy, and only moved into the Feva class in secondary school.
“Jane and I began sailing 420 together two years ago, and it’s been pretty hectic,” she says. “The training – in the gym and on the water – is very demanding, and you have to cut out a lot. But it’s worth it,” she says.
ORLA KEADY(18) of Cumann Seoltóireachta an Spidéil (CSS) in Spiddal, Co Galway, took her first sailing trip at the age of two in her dad's cruiser on Cashla Bay. She was in sixth class in primary school when she began in an Oppie from Spiddal, and is now part of a double act in a 420 with Aoife de Faoite, also of CSS.
Both have competed at regional and national level, and Orla was captain for a team of six from Galway competing in the national schools regatta in Schull, Cork. “Once you get to a certain level in the 420, you know you are competing against new boats, new sails, and it is very hard to match that.”
She also sailed twice on the now-sunken Asgard II, one of thousands who have been besotted by the very different experience of tall-ship sailing. Her first trip was in August 2007, from Inverness to Dublin, and on her second voyage from Cork to Dublin, she completed watch-leader training.
Last year, Orla and her dad Billy travelled to Barcelona to cheer on Kerryman Damian Foxall, seven times global circumnavigator, as he and Jean-Pierre Dick won the non-stop Barcelona World Race. “Professional sailing would appeal to me, but it’s a very tough world,” she says.
Orla is very keen on instructing sailing, has already spent one summer teaching, and finds it very rewarding to share her love of the sea with young kids.
FINN LYNCH(13) of Blessington Sailing Club, Co Wicklow, won a special award from his school, Carlow Christian Brothers, last week for his sailing achievements. He is a member of the ISA national Topper squad, and has secured several firsts at Irish championships, and 10th in the British inland Topper championships, this year.
Finn’s two older brothers, Ben (18) and Rory (15), have both distinguished themselves in Topper and Laser dinghies, and Ben is currently crewing a 53ft yacht en route from the Caribbean to Portugal. “I started in Toppers when I was eight, and I liked it from the very beginning,” says Finn. “I play Gaelic and rugby and I am very competitive, but sailing always comes first.”
He has been watching the Volvo race on television, and is travelling to Galway with the family’s rigid inflatable to watch the in-port racing on the June bank holiday weekend. “I’d like to be a professional sailor, but I also like the sight of land!” he says. “I think I prefer dinghy racing, and I would really like to be an instructor and spend my time on the water as a summer job.”
CIARAN JORDAN(11) of Galway Bay Sailing Club took to the water initially on family trips on a cruiser when he was about four, and began Oppie sailing when he was seven. He soon gained confidence and competence, took his first two ISA training levels in Spiddal, and has been involved in an active junior programme in his club for the past two years.
With club colleague Jack Collins, Ciaran recently qualified for the Optimist trials and he is part of the under-12 squad which will compete in the British national championships in Largs, Scotland, next August.
“Being able to recover if you have had a bad day and aiming to do better the next time out” is how Ciaran describes an ideal competitive Oppie sailor. “You can’t go back and undo what you did wrong, but you can learn a lot from that,” he says.
Ciaran has been following the Volvo Ocean Race keenly. Both Damian Foxall and Justin Slattery on the Irish-Chinese entry, Green Dragon, admitted that they were inspired at his age or younger by NCB Ireland, the first Irish entry in what was then the Whitbread Round the World Race. Thinking about it, Ciaran also feels he would like to be a professional sailor.
For his parents, Vincent and Martina, and his younger sailing sister Róisín, most weekends involve driving to training or regattas. “It takes a lot of effort,” says Vincent. “Packing up again late in the day before a long trip home is about as hard as it gets. The reward is seeing them develop into good, confident sailors – it is almost always an unqualified pleasure . . .”