A Killaloe Sailing Club member is on the crest of a wave preparing for the second time to become the first Irish person to complete an around-the-world race known as the “Voyage for Madmen”. Pat Lawless now has a driving desire more than ever to try and win the 2026 Golden Globe Race, after he had to retire from the 2022 race when his self-steering failed 1,200 nautical miles west of Cape Town.
With a heavy heart, after repairs he sailed Green Rebel back home to Ireland. Without a self-steering system, he was unable to achieve his dream. He could have made repairs and continued the voyage under Chichester Class as a one-stop circumnavigation, but decided to retire.
“I felt terrible shame because of all the support I received. You learn from shame because you don’t want to feel it again. I was heartbroken, I was trying to fix it. When I got into Cape Town everyone was so nice and my sponsors rang me,” he said.
“Five of the boats had to leave because of self-steering problems. The wind is never a problem at sea, it is the height of the waves. My mast only went into the water once during the race but you expect it to go in more crossing the Southern Ocean. It could go in five times a day if you hit the wrong weather.
“The boat is 11 tonnes. It is the waves that knock it over, not the wind. I hope to have the boat almost fully ready a year before the next race.”
Having spent about 20 years as a fisherman, skills learned as a dinghy sailor and offshore race helped him to finish in fourth place in Cape Town.
Interestingly, in 1989, his father, had to be rescued 1,200 miles west of Capetown by a Norwegian freight ship, having suffered storm damage, suffering the loss of his ‘Iniscealtra’.
Pat will depart from Les Sables d’Olonne, France on September 6, 2026 and sail solo, non-stop around the world in his Saltram Saga 36 via the five great capes and back to Les Sables d’Olonne.
The 30,000 nautical mile voyage is regarded as the toughest, loneliest and most dangerous race in sailing. Keeping with the spirit of the very first Golden Globe Race, competitors are restricted to using technology that was available in 1968 and will not be permitted to communicate with family or friends during the nine-month voyage.
This means sailing without modern technology or the benefit of satellite-based navigation aids other than a compass, sextant, the stars and the sun.
He will sail the race in the spirit of his father, Pat who, in 1996, at the age of 70 got back to Ireland after sailing solo around the world. He is also raising money and public awareness for his nominated charity Parkinson’s Association Ireland.
Having started fundraising for the next race, he is confident of securing a main sponsor and a secondary sponsor and is investing anything he earns on boat repairs.
He is also one of the six featured sailors in a new GGR documentary film that is set to be released later this year. It will premier on CBC in Canada and will be redistributed internationally by Off the Fence.
His father took out a family membership in Iniscealtra Sailing Club, Mountshannon and brought Pat out on Lough Derg from a young age.
Before entering the first Golden Globe, he was made an honorary life member of Killaloe Sailing Club, which also supported him financially.
Having benefited from family membership, Mr Lawless became a member of Iniscealtra when he got his own boat.
“I loved sailing in Lough Derg and still do. I was racing in Garrykennedy last summer. I have to go to Whitegate to fix a boat for a person,” he said.
“Before I entered the Golden Globe Race, I had a boat, “The Loon” on Lough Derg. That was my father’s old boat, which he used to sail around the world. My nephew bought it off me.
“Before I got married, I had a boat on Lough Derg. I had it in Garrykennedy in the inside harbour. I kept it in Killaloe during the winter but sailing down was awkward because the wind was always against you. It was easier in Garrykennedy because you are in the middle of the lake. I love going up to Mountshannon and Terryglass. When you are used to sailing off the West coast, it is lovely to go on Lough Derg where there are no tides.”
His father brought him down the River Shannon in rowing boats when he was a child. Mr Lawless built his first boat at the age of 12 and put a sail on it.
“When children start to sail, they learn balance, trigonometry engineering, putting up the sails, rigging and the mast,” he explains.
One of the benefits of completing the Golden Globe Race is the mental strength it provided him.
“Mentally, it was good for me. I am a deeper person after it. It is like a big retreat. It changes your attitude to the size of the world because you are travelling so slowly compared to being on an airplane.
“It is the longest loneliest sporting event in the world. This is sailing by the seat of your trousers.
“It’s one man against the ocean. If I came last and I did my best, that would be fine. If I came second and I felt I made a few mistakes that would bother me.
“In the Southern Ocean, Point Nemo is thousands of miles away from land. The closest person to you is in a space station about 420 miles over your head.”
Before the build up to the 2018 Golden Globe race, his brother, John mentioned the race to him in a telephone call.
“After the phone call, I googled the race and thought I would love to do that race. I didn’t think I had any hope of ever getting there. As time went on I started to follow it, it was the build up to the 2018 race, which was the first one in 50 years,” he said.
“The more I looked into it, the more I realised I wanted to do it. I spoke to my wife, Rita, and said I would love to do that race. She said ‘go for it’. Three days later, she said if you want to sell the house to do it you can.”
Having sailed more than 14,000 miles before the start of the race, he met all the other race requirements such as a skipper’s and radio ticket.
His brother Jim accompanied him for his purchase of the Saltram Saga, which he sailed from Amsterdam to France in March 2019.
Mr Lawless recalls cashing in his private old age pension helped purchase the boat, and pay the race entry fee with some money left over. He also earned as much money as he could before the race.
“Funding is very difficult. But I was humbled by how nice and good people are. It is hard getting money because you feel like a beggar,” he said.
“I sailed the boat home before May weekend in time for the Limerick Riverfest.
“My friend, Eamon Andrews, came down to the boat and was the first person who gave me €1,000. It was fantastic because it made my funding journey easier. People were so good to me.
“It cost be about €200,000 to do the race, I thought I could do it cheaper. My time management wasn’t good. I should have borrowed money earlier to get things done earlier.”
Out of the 32 sailors who paid their entry fee, only half of them made it to the start of the race.
“The race was fantastic. Navigating with the sexton wasn’t a problem but I found myself two or three miles west of my position when I got it confirmed,” he said.
“I had a fantastic sail from Lanzarote down the east side of Fuerteventura. I sailed down past Cape Verdi and everything was working well. If there is bad weather ahead of us, race control will message us.
“I was advised to go east, so I wound up east of where I intended to be. I went down east of the Cape Verdis, through the doldrums. I went south west, which was a slight mistake, it was a gamble. That is where all the goose barnacles were that stick to the hull.
“I cleaned the boat. The next time I will go straight through the doldrums as fast as I can to get away from the goose barnacles that can slow you down.
“You are continuously in race mode, you are trying to get to the next weight point as fast as I can.
“I sleep for 20 minutes, check if everything is okay and going and then sleep again for 20 more minutes. I would be eating, cooking, navigating, and sailing the boat.
“You wake up to make sure the wind hasn’t changed. I often got up to check things, went back and when I got up again wondered had I got up but you would know once you see things are in place. At sea, you are lying down ten or 12 hours a day.”
One of his highlights was witnessing wildlife across the equator such as flying fish, turtles, whales and dolphins.
Once rainwater is harvested on the boat, he inserts sterilising tablets and keeps this separate from drinking water.
His biggest fear during the race is to be hit by lighting at night. On one occasion his fishing boat was struck by lightening which blew up all batteries, alternators, electrical equipment and bulbs.
He didn’t drink much water during the race. His favourite food was potatoes in salt water or oil. Rice, pasta and other dried food require a lot of water.
Breakfast consisted of a cereal with long-life milk or fruit juice. He used to make bread out of bread mix. He ate his main meal at around 3pm.
ain supper items before he switched off by reading a book for about two hours after finishing navigation.
Competitors are only allowed tape cassettes and can’t use compact discs. Music brought up memories that sometimes made him lonesome and worried about people at home. He liked Marks and Spencers tinned chicken.
Tinned foods already have liquid in them. He brought very little alcohol and plans to bring more for the next race.
Sitting down the cockpit at night, he recalled it was nice to have a “sundowner”. More tins of beer are on his shopping list in 2026. Fuel is used very sparingly. If all boat fuel is used, this brings a three-week penalty. All the race boats are made from recycled materials.
Before he left, he asked his wife, Rita to tell him if anything happened his mother, Nancy (95) through the race office who can contact him with urgent messages.
“The fact you are cut off and out of contact makes you wonder what is happening at home. Three of my friends died when I was sailing the boat from Amsterdam, which I didn’t expect,” he said.
“I didn’t mind being out of contact. The world becomes very big. There are no ships, no airplanes but plenty of wildlife.
“I am not bothered by strong winds. But in calm weather the sails are flapping. They get more worn in these conditions and ropes get frayed. During a day without wind, you might make ten or thirty miles.
“It is much harder work to sail when there is no wind. Wind always changes at the dawn. If you weren’t in a race, it would be quite boring because you would not be pushing yourself.”
His scariest moment was when lightning struck and resulted in his mast going into the water. His biggest concern was to quickly dry off batteries that got wet.
On one occasion, he was left with broken ribs and a torn shoulder muscle after jib sheets hit him. Competitors had to go over towards Brazil 300 miles west of Trinidade. All the sailors spoke to each other regularly on a Single Sideband Radio.
“If I couldn’t hear a boat or they couldn’t hear me, another boat would pass on a message so I knew where I was. Some boats gave false positions, which is fine because it is a race.
“When I got to Lanzarote, I thought I was fifth but I was third. Two of the boats gave positions ahead of where they were.”
When his self-steering failed, he had to use a sheet to tiller to Cape Town, where his race ended.
There are 26 entrants already in the 2026 race. There is another Saltram Saga boat from a Scottish sailor.
Competitors are not advised to stay in shipping lanes and go across them at 90 degrees as quickly as possible.
On his way home from Cape Town in another boat, he stopped in Dakar in Senagalm which was a “beautiful tropical place with nice people. It was a French colony full of French yachts. It was Christmas Eve. A friend of mine from the Golden Globe showed us around. We had a meal for three in the Yacht Club beside the beach with ten drinks that came to €13.50. It was paradise.
“On the way home in my boat, I stopped in St Helena. It is the island that is 2,000 miles away from anywhere where Napoleon was imprisoned in and died. It is tropical, and gets rain,” he said.
“It is a British colony. It was just paradise. It was like being anchored off the Cliffs of Moher as there were big cliffs. You are on a good mooring.”
He described the 2022 Golden Globe winner South African Kirsten Neuschafer as a “fantastic, highly intelligent, tough as you get”.
She became the first woman to win a solo, round-the-world yacht race after 233 days, 20 hours, 43 minutes and 47 seconds.
His preparations for the 2022 and 2026 races are similar. The budget is €107,000, it costs €22,000 to enter and there is no prize money.
“I have a lot done but I have a lot to do. I have strengthened the mast,” he said.
“I am going over to a rigger Jade Edwards in Wales to get all my rigging checked out. There are some things I want to change, some things have worn. I will get three new sails. We are only allowed nine sails.
“Your sails are your engine, it is what keeps the boat going as quickly as possible.
“It has been a fantastic journey. I am working trying to make money and I am flat out doing things on the boat.
“During the race, the other people are your competitors. After a few hours in the race, you don’t see them. You can talk to them on the radio, so you are racing against yourself. It is a very solo thing, you are out there on your own.
“I feel safer at sea alone than I do anywhere else. I love it. It is beautiful being out at sea. There are times when you are lonely, it is like a retreat, but I am stronger after it.
“My wife, Rita has been so supportive, it has brought us closer together.
“The boat is out of the water in Dingle, the engine has been take out, but it is good. The control box in the cockpit was water-damaged. I have taken off the alternator and starter and got them serviced. Some of the electric equipment that got wet are being replaced.”
He will remove his self-steering from the boat to get it fully serviced in Holland, learn how to repair it, and bring a second spare unit.
He plans to sail around Ireland for the next two summers, stopping in ports all around Ireland.
East Clare correspondent, Dan Danaher is a journalism graduate of Rathmines and UL. He has won numerous awards for special investigations on health, justice, environment, and reports on news, agriculture, disability, mental health and community.