A crew of five sailors from West Clare are currently involved in the sailing adventure of their lives travelling to France aboard the Sally O’ Keeffe – a community owned boat they built themselves. The crew on board who are all members of the local Seol Sionna sailing group are Niamh McGibney from Mullagh, Stephen Morris and Enda Mc Donagh from Moyasta, Peter Ranalow from Kildysart, and James Devane from Kilrush.
The ambitious group left Baltimore in Cork on Tuesday night, July 9 and arrived in the Isles of Scilly on Thursday morning, July 11 for their first stop en route to France. That leg of the journey alone took nearly 40 hours sailing on a 26ft open boat. The group plan to attend traditional maritime festivals in Brest and Douarnenez in Brittany over the next two weeks.
The Sally O’ Keeffe was built in 2012 at Querrin by New Zealander Stephen Morris who is also on board her on the trip.
Crew member and public relations officer for Seol Sionna, Niamh McGibney told The Clare Champion the five of them arrived safely in Brest on Saturday, July 13.
“We arrived safely in Brest yesterday and were very grateful to come upon our friends from the Galway Hooker Sailing Club who took care of our weary souls and got us sorted with everything,” said Niamh.
“Fête Maritime here in Brest is wonderful. Brimming with boats and boat enthusiasts, with lots of boat building and heritage displays. We are in awe.
“The journey here was a great adventure for all on board, the following wind gave us plenty of sailing opportunity. We had a nice fresh day and night of sailing leaving the Scilly Isles and a few splashes overboard, a good wet awakening for anyone who was trying to get some rest on deck.
“The crew stayed healthy and resilient, and in great humour. For me, I felt so lucky to be out there with friends that were so supportive and knowledgeable. At no point did I wish to be anywhere else, just perhaps a little warmer where I was.”
For the crew a festival like Fête Maritime is all about making connections, chatting with other clubs to see what they are doing, learning, and getting inspiration for future plans for their club.
“It’s a beautiful way to engage with traditional boats, see demonstrations of traditional boat building techniques and meet the wider sailing community. It has been great to meet and sail with the Galway Hooker Sailing Club members most of all, as they are a dedicated group of people, volunteers like ourselves, flying the flag for Ireland here in Brest and highlighting the maritime history of the West of Ireland,” Ms McGibney explained.
Another important factor for the Seol Sionna representatives is that the Shannon Estuary has a great history with the Breton people and has a maritime heritage that has potential to be explored and celebrated. Plouzané on the outskirts of Brest in Brittany is twinned with Kilrush, and St Senan links Scattery Island with Plouzané. Links between the Irish and French town were discovered in the late 1970s when a Breton historian looked at the origin of the name and discovered it means ‘church of Sane’ and that Sane was the Irish monk Senan whose home was Scattery Island.
Since landing on terra firma in Brittany, the group have been active in fostering positive relations with Kilrush’s twin town. They were in contact with Christian Poullaoeuc from the Office Pour les Echanges à Plouzané who kindly welcomed them and organised for them to visit Plouzané for a small gathering in the town hall.
In turn, the group welcomed Mr Poullaoeuc aboard the Sally O’Keeffe for a sail, and they brought a gift of pebbles from Scattery Island to place in the Église Saint-Sané (St Senan’s Church) which is dedicated to St Senan. They also had the opportunity to meet with friends from Plouhinec which is twinned with Kilkee, and sailed with them on Sunday. Aside from Irish-Franco relations, the focus returned to maritime activities on Thursday, July 17 when the West Clare crew joined a race from Brest to Douarnenez where they attended a traditional wooden boat festival called the Fêtes Maritimes de Douarnenez.
“We are so excited about being there and having the opportunity to spend time with these beautiful boats and sailing communities,” Niamh added.
Niamh is relatively new to sailing. She first started sailing in 2015 when she lived in Wicklow and then she joined Seol Sionna through the Sally O’Keeffe crew training programme in 2017.
“I have adored every minute since and I’ve been adopted into the most beautiful community of people whom I cherish dearly,” she said.
Sailing on an open boat means it is not possible to go down below deck and there are a few seats on deck which throws up multiple challenges on a long journey. And what kind of challenges did they actually encounter?
“Personally I think the main challenge for me was getting over the mental hump that I could make a journey like that. After the first leg from Kilrush to Baltimore, I was game for whatever was coming next. On an open boat you know you will have periods where you will be wet and cold but we picked the most suitable weather window to ensure as much safety and comfort as possible.
“Sleeping on Sally’s deck was not too bad at all, apart from the odd wave sneaking in, it just was what it was. Other than that the five star toilet facilities were to be recommended (a bucket), let’s just say it was fun. You know, challenges are few when you’re with people you trust and respect and I couldn’t have been with a better group of people. I’m enjoying them more every day were here together,” she described.
Niamh is keen to highlighting the West Clare sailing community and their “amazing” club which she hopes will spur on more sailing groups on the estuary. She feels it brings positivity to the West Clare area, and the small community of sea and nature lovers who reside there.
Chairperson of Seol Sionna, Dixie Collins told The Clare Champion the boat itself was brought to west Cork for the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival over the weekend of May 24 and was docked there until they set sail on July 9 for the Scilly Isles. And Mr Collins said the planning that has gone into a nautical trip of this nature was not insignificant.
“For our open work boat this is a very ambitious sailing adventure which has been planned meticulously for the last year. We are dependent on the weather and wind to be in our favour to get there and back safely. This is a trip of a lifetime for our club members. It is probably the most adventurous sail from Clare in our lifetime, and on a boat we build ourselves and is owned by the community of West Clare.
“We’d to get it safe. The life rafts need to be serviced and made safe. In addition an AIS system had to be installed meaning the vessel could be tracked on he marine tracking application. Equipment on board also had to be replaced, and we had to re-do the stave which holds up masts. We had to do it all ourselves. We tapped in to the skills many of the guys have – we have volunteers who are electricians, engineers and mechanics.”
Seol Sionna was originally called the West Clare Currach Club when it was established 25 years ago to focus on building traditional West Clare fishing canoes however, a few of the members then moved on to building boats like the turf boats from the Loop Head Peninsula which sailed the Shannon Estuary up to Limerick. And so the Sally O’ Keeffe was inspired by a turf boat.
As for the name of the boat, when they named her they asked for submissions that would be a link to the river and boat heritage. Sally O’ Keeffe was a local woman from a fishing family on the river in Querrin who had rowed currachs and sailed boats in the area all her life. Her grandson, Marty O’ Keeffe who had fished currachs as a young man visited the area from America when he was 100 years of age .
“We decided to rebuild a boat based on those work boats but we changed it….we wanted a different one,” Dixie explained.
In changing the vessel, they introduced a top sail like the one on the Cornwall boats. The top sail gives the boat significant speed enabling it to travel at a sail speed of up to six knots per hour on the estuary waters. With a tidal range of five metres on the Shannon, it is one of the largest ranges in the country so such a speed is essential.
The shape of the hull was also changed in the modern vessel as the original turf boats would have been designed to sit with their heavy turf loads on the flats of the estuary. Many of the members would have fished on fishing boats when they were younger and they wanted a boat that could take them all the way up to Kinvara in county Galway to attend Cruinniú na mBád or down to Baltimore for boating events there.
Another project the Seol Sionna volunteers have been involved in was the building of a St Ayles skiff, a traditional Scottish four-oared rowing boat, which featured at Carrigaholt’s Feile na Sionna festival last weekend.
As for the current sailing trip, with the crossing to the Isles of Scilly having taken 40 hours and the trip to Brest another 24 hours, and with challenging conditions, team work was imperative to say the least. “They are a good crew together”, Dixie said.
Dixie said the crew are lucky to have Stephen Morris, their shipwright (boat builder) who operates a boat building business on Kilrush Marina. Steve has built seven Dublin Bay 21s (footer yachts) for the Dun Laoghaire Yacht Club and his operation is widely regarded as the centre of wooden boat building in Ireland. He recently won an award of Best Boat Builder of the Year for his Dublin Bay 21.
Once the crew have docked the Sally O’Keefe in Kilrush Marina in over two weeks time, Seol Sionna will resume community sail training with their volunteer skippers. With a steering group of ten volunteer skippers they run, sail and train people in sea-faring skills sailing over six nights and one day. The training is something they have conducted every summer since the boat was built in 2012. The members sail the boat from the start of May until when they finish up in October going out three nights per week and at the weekend.
“There is nothing like this boat and project in Ireland. It is built, run and managed locally. We have trained up hundreds of people to run that boat,” Dixie said.
Finally, Dixie recalled local lore around the story of how the French used to fish in the estuary up until the 1950s and 1960s. Some fishermen were such frequent visitors they were allowed to put goods on tick at local shops in Carrigaholt.
Sharon Dolan D’Arcy covers West Clare news. After completing a masters in journalism at University of Galway, Sharon worked as a court reporter at the Sligo Weekender. She was also editor of the Athenry News and Views.