Wave says hello as I nearly wave goodbye

Voyage on the Jeanie Johnston/Day 3:   We could have done with a relic of the True Cross on a gold chain to trail behind the…

Voyage on the Jeanie Johnston/Day 3:  We could have done with a relic of the True Cross on a gold chain to trail behind the Jeanie Johnston early this morning, for just hours after we left Rathmullen pier to re-enact the Flight of the Earls journey to France, we were hit by a huge swell.  Seán Mac Connellreports.

The wave sent a shudder through the ship and literally dumped tonnes of water on to the decks, emptied all the fridges in the galley and almost tore away a rigid inflatable boat being carried behind the wheelhouse.

The bad weather seemed to have waited for my watch, because I was that sailor on lookout at the pointy end of the boat when the wave struck and I shot up a few decades of the Rosary for those who were criticised for overspending money on this magnificent boat which weathered the nasty weather so well.

For the first time I realised what a nightmare it must have been for the O'Neills and O'Donnells who faced the same kind of weather when they left their homes and their families for the safety of Spain 400 years ago. Their boat, which had been chartered in France by the Maguires, was carrying 99 people and would not have had the kind of sophisticated navigational and other aids which were available to us last night.

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But their kinfolk would have been just as sick and disorientated as many of us were last night as we rolled out into the north Atlantic under a sky bejewelled by stars, yet full of menace and danger, from the safety of Lough Swilly.

Their captain did not have the option to go down the Irish Sea, because had he done so, he would have been instantly spotted and probably imprisoned or killed by the English authorities who had spent millions of pounds in the previous decade trying to subdue the earls and their allies.

Earlier, hundreds of people had gathered at Rathmullen pier to give us a late send-off and the oldest passenger/crew member on board, Dan Gallagher, who lives near the mouth of Lough Swilly, played them a tune on his fiddle. Dan is an old-style fiddler, probably the last of the uileann (elbow) players as he holds the violin in the crook of his arm while playing, and this helps him when he sometimes dances along.

But the 79-year-old from Killycolman, Rathmullen, did something I would not do. He flew up the rigging like a blackbird in the training exercises the Jeanie Johnston crew laid out for us on Monday while we waited to leave.

When my turn to climb came I cited fidelity to the readers of The Irish Times and slunk down below as my reason for not hanging on grimly to the scattering of ropes which brings the brave aloft to trim the sails.

"I'll climb it any time you want. I'd climb to the top even now," Dan said to me yesterday as the ship literally bate her way through choppy seas off a rain-covered Isle of Man.

Dan, who can handle the piano and virtually any instrument you could hand him, came on the voyage on a whim, signing on virtually on the last day for the craic.

Diverse would be a fine word to describe the company on board this vessel, each with their own different reasons for being here.

There are three lads here from Drogheda whose primary interest is in canoes, and they too are here for the craic and to learn more about sailing and the sea.

And there is a man called Aidan Haughey, who unlike myself, is not claiming any relationship with any other part of the extended family. He is the man who organised the entire celebrations.

More tomorrow