You could over-analyse the many attractions of a round Ireland cruise. Apart from being a romantic yet manageable act of homage to our island home, it appeals equally to the adventurous - in that you are always outward bound – and the homebodies, in that you’re headed for your home port from the moment you leave it. And in those circumstances, it’s a rather dull approach to the project to work out exactly where the halfway mark will be in relation to your start point. For although everyone does of course do such calculations, often the specific point slips by unnoticed, as the interest of the moment is in the fresh coastlines and islands up ahead still waiting to be enjoyed
The ambition to cruise or race or set records for sailing round our island is something nurtured by probably a majority of Irish sailors, and it has been achieved by thousands since the biennial Round Ireland Race from Wicklow was introduced in 1980. It’s a healthy straight line distance at 704 miles, but if you’re cruising and diverting to the more interesting places along the way, you’ll very quickly run up a total of a thousand nautical miles, and often it’s 1,200.
The harbour at Rathlin Island, Ireland’s most northeasterly outpost, and a very handy port in a round Ireland cruise. Antrim coast is beyond, with Knocklayd above Ballycastle prominent
But far from familiarity with the circuit through the Round Ireland race reducing the sense of challenge in such a round Ireland cruise, it has on the contrary increased it. For all recent Round Ireland Races have had a volatile weather pattern which has heightened the perception of our Atlantic seaboard as being an often very seriously rugged place to sail.
ARE WEST COAST SAILORS BONKERS?
For some, this merely reinforces the notion that West Coast sailors must be bonkers. But for others, it makes the appeal of cruising the Atlantic Ocean frontier that much greater. For only the most totally concentrated raceaholic would see the great headlands and islands of the west coast as nothing more than marks of the course.
Anyone with the slightest spark of human curiosity will muse at least for a moment on the kind of life lived in these places. And as you approach some great headland, you’ll notice the local fishing boats – often astonishingly small craft – working in the lee of the cliffs.
Even as you’re taking a quick glance, one or two of those little boats will peel off and disappear towards a hidden harbour entrance nearby. You’d be less than human if you didn’t feel a tiny urge to return some day and sail into that harbour at leisure. And it’s a yearning which is increased while racing at night, for even as you pound along in late evening, closing in on another line of darkening coastline, the house lights will start to come on – sometimes in the most unexpected and remote places, and in others often in surprising abundance – giving you that very human urge to know what manner of folk live there.
Few images so successfully capture the challenge of sailing Ireland’s spectacular West Coast as this video of Lloyd Thornburg’s Phaedo 3 making a record round Ireland time at the Blaskets in 2016.
For sure, if you live in Ireland you can readily and easily visit such places by land and occasionally ferry. But sailing to them in part of a properly-fulfilled round Ireland cruise sometimes feels - at its very best - to be an act of performance art, a nautical narrative in which everyone met ashore in welcoming harbours, or on another boat in a sociable anchorage, seems to have been sent out by Central Casting to enhance the experience.
HIGH STOOL DAYS
After living through this, you’ll readily agree with the statement that cruising in Ireland is the best in the world when the weather is good, and it’s still the best in the world when the weather is bad and you’re weatherbound in port on what the locals call “a high stool day”, for then the absorption of the local culture is invariably entertaining.
Two boats sailed in round Ireland cruises – the 1912-vintage 9-ton J B Kearney yawl Ainmara (left) did the circuit in 1964, and the Doug Peterson-designed Contessa 35 Witchcraft of Howth went round in 1995 and 1999, and also raced round in 1992 and 1994, getting second and third respectively in class, and 13th overall out of 54 boats in 1994. Photo: W M Nixon
And though it’s more convenient than ever to leave a boat in mid-cruise at some distant marina, or join a boat in mid-cruise at somewhere conveniently reached in a morning’s overland travel, there’s still nothing quite so satisfying as The Full Monty, the three to four weeks continuous round Ireland cruise in which the boat becomes your true home.
EATING THE ELEPHANT
That said, the reality of modern life is such that sometimes the Ireland circuit has to be done the way you eat an elephant – one bit at a time. And if you utilise public transport to get back to base at the beginning and end of each bite-size saiing chunk, it’s part of the entertainment if approached in the right way.
Back in 1995, when our hefty Contessa 35 still had sails of sufficient newness to be a racing proposition, we’d already managed a three week cruise to northwest Spain and back when we did the Dun Laoghaire-Dingle Race as yet another ding-dong against Jim Donegan’s similarly-rated Hustler 36 White Rooster from Cork.
We’d left Jim and his team for dead at Tory Island during the previous year’s Round Ireland Race, thereby pushing him off the class podium in Wicklow, so in racing to Dingle he was flat out to reverse the situation, and he did so in a real nail-biter finish.
You always leave somewhere unvisited for another time….Typical round Ireland cruise, in this case antic-clockwise. It resulted in ICC Vice Commodore Derek White of Strangford being awarded the club’s Round Ireland Cup for 2022.
But with the boat in Dingle it made sense to leave her there for a week or two in the care of Brian Farrell and the excellent then-new marina, and continue northward on a round Ireland cruise. Re-joining the ship involved a gloriously long train journey in the dear dead days beyond recall when you could spend the entire Dublin to Tralee rail journey on an extremely leisurely lunch in the well-appointed dining car, and then get to Dingle via a 45 minute taxi journey over the Connor Pass, with arrival being celebrated at Flahive’s.
ARAN ISLANDS
Our distance objectives for that leg were modest, as we were headed for Clifden with plenty of time for a detailed visit to the Aran Islands on the way. This was duly managed even if one of the crew did leave his enormous wallet behind on the bar counter at Inish Meain, but it was brought over by the evening plane to catch up with us at Kilronan.
We’d other things on our mind by then, as a full southerly gale was forecast, and in those pre-harbour development days the limited and very tidal quayside at Kilronan and the anchorage off it were likely to become rather lively places.
But fortunately in re-purposing the boat for multiple use back in 1991, we’d transformed her cruising potential with ground tackle fit for a 45-footer, installing a vertical self-stowing chain locker beside the mast and learning to live with having the chain come right across the foredeck to a substantial chain winch beside the mast by having a removable channel on top of the forehatch.
It worked, it still works, and it meant we could carry a grown-up amount of five-sixteenth calibrated chain, something like 83 metres because we wanted good old-fashioned 45 fathoms, and a Bruce or Rocna or CQR anchor at the end of it. Thus the prospect of a bouncy night off Kilronan with others boats dragging around us in the rain-sluiced dark didn’t arise, as we went across to the much more snug anchorage close in off Killeany, dug the anchor well in and gave it plenty of chain, and then settled down to let the chef du jour give of his best for dinner while the sheer weight of the boat – the Contessa 35 chimes in at 7.5 tonnes in cruising trim – kept us comfortable.
Outside O’Dowd’s in Roundstone, with the Twelve Bens beyond
Next day was still bumpy, so we took the Inner Passage from Golam Head (where Golam Harbour was to provide a memorable visit some years later) through to Roundstone, where O’Dowd’s (the PNP or “Pub Next The Pier”) already had a very special place in the Round Ireland Cruising Memory Bank.
PERFECTION OF ROUNDSTONE
Our first cruising visit there had been in 1982, going round Ireland anti-clockwise with the sweet little Hustler 30 Turtle, and by that stage – as seems to have occurred so often in those days – we’d become engineless. Despite that, we transitted the Joyce Sound Pass inside Slyne Head for the first time, and then anchored close in off the peerless beach at Gurteen Bay for a swim in surprisingly crisp water before heading in for Roundstone.
We anchored off in such a way that we could relax in the window seat of O’Dowd’s while savouring pints, with the view of the pink light of the sunset illuminating the Twelve Bens to provide a perfect background for our beloved little boat swinging gently to her anchor. But the spell seemed to be broken when a Frenchman parked his 4X4 quite legitimately right outside the pub - no double yellow lines in those days. However, when he came in and ordered a drink, the O’Dowd leaned across the bar and whispered in his ear, and s’help me didn’t he go out and remove his view-blocker to another parking place, leaving us to resume our enchanted reverie.
Little boats at season’s end – Autumn 1982 at the pier on Lambay, with the Ireland-circling Turtle (left) and John Gore-Grimes’ Nich 31 Shardana recently home from the Arctic
Fast forward to 1995, and this time we took the Joyce Sound the other way, and in Clifden - as planned - laid a mooring at Ardbear at the head of the bay, and then adjourned to King’s in the heart of town to choose our bus to Galway. For in those day, if you missed the 3 o’clock bus, there was another one at 3.15pm.
METHOD IN BUS MADNESS
There was method in their madness. Along the winding road from Clifden to Galway, there’d be enough people to fill two buses waiting at various stops - some of them decidedly offbeat places - to get to town. So the two buses would leap-frog each other all the way and finish over-filled, thus the winners would be the shrewd folk who’d made judicious choices to get their favourite seat in one of the buses in Clifden.
You didn’t find that bit of information in the increasingly informative Irish Cruising Club Sailing Directions, and I don’t think we passed it on as there was talk of reducing the Clifden service. But there were ICC Sailing Directions reminders on our first invariable stopover from Clifden in 1995, as the next stage northabout was first stop at Inishbofin, Ireland’s ultimate glue-pot cruising destination. We’d become enchanted with Bofin during the first Round Ireland Cruise in 1964, an anti-clockwise venture with the 9-ton yawl Ainmara, and have remained enchanted ever since.
But eventually we tore ourselves away in 1964, for our time was limited and – like it or not – we were doing the circuit under sail only, which meant that we spent a bumpy night far out in the Atlantic as a “yachtsman’s southwest gale” went through, and the next day seeming to slug for ever to windward towards the increasingly enormous peak of Mount Brandon, which loomed majestically over us when we finally anchored in big country off the tiny village of Brandon on the west side of Brandon Bay.
Big country. Ainmara in Brandon Bay in 1964 after a long spell of windward work from Inishbofin. Photo: W M Nixon
The Sailing Directions weren’t encouraging, saying there were no facilities ashore when we were dying for a big feed of pub grub. But through the binoculars there did look like there might be at least one pub of sorts, so we rowed ashore in the little clinker dinghy to the miniature pier, and found three pubs.
Very basic establishments maybe, certainly not trendy watering holes, but hospitable and available nevertheless. One of them even had a welcoming fire lit despite it being June, and the woman of the house rustled up a marvellous meal of hearty fish broth followed by classic bacon and cabbage with new season Kerry potatoes.
It was food for a king, so as a diligent new member of the Irish Cruising Club, when we got home I sent a letter to Paul Campbell, editor of the Sailing Directions, saying that as far as we were concerned Brandon had become a gourmet destination port. In response, Roger Bourke of Limerick, the ICC member who covered the area for the Directions, replied to say that he was well aware that Brandon had three pubs, but he didn’t think they were quite the sort of places that ICC members would wish to patronize.
Brandon village as it is today
Nevertheless the next edition of the South & West Book was favourably amended according to our info. But it was a long time before I felt sufficiently established as a member to reveal to anyone else that a Limerick sailor had once presumed to pass judgment on the quality of Kerry hospitality.
THE ISLAND HOPPERS
Mention of Inishbofin is also a reminder that there are those who think that the only proper cruise round Ireland is a matter of sailing from one of the offshore islands to another, without calling at any mainland port or anchorage. Indeed, I once knew fastidious owner-skipper who had his substantial yawl so comfortably organised and well-victualled that he once did a Round Ireland cruise with a dozen stops without bothering to go ashore at all.
And certainly the islands are there, with three of the most interesting being at crucial corners, with Tory at the northwest, Rathlin at the northeast, and Cape Clear at the southwest. Only the Great Saltee at the southeastern corner is an island where you’d be doubtful about overnighting, but all the other three now have good if sometimes crowded harbours for secure berthing, and this is a reminder of a curious trans-Ireland link.
For in Rathlin, you find the main families are – or used to be – the McCurdys and the McCuaigs, with the McCuaigs the hereditary publicans who famously built a large new pub on a completely new harbourside site because the old pub “got wore out”.
Quite what the McCurdys specialized in I don’t know, but some went to America, and if you’re on Cape Clear and near the Fastnet Rock, you’ll very quickly remember that Jim McCurdy, having worked with yacht designer Phil Rhodes who created Dick Nye’s legendary all-conquering yawl Carina II, then branched out with Rhodes’ son Bodie to set up a new design company, and they created the mighty Carina III for the Nye family in 1968-69, still going strong under Rives Potts’ ownership, and for my money one of the greatest boats that ever sailed the high seas.
Rathlin man makes good….Jim McCurdy and Dick Nye aboard Carina III in the 1972 Transatlantic Race to Spain, when they read the weather towards the finish so well that they won overall by an enormous margin. Photo courtesy Sheila McCurdy
Subsequently Jim’s daughter Sheila became Commodore of the Cruising Club of America, and she’s currently compiling the complex story of that extraordinary organization as it becomes accustomed to being a hundred years old. But the fact that this is being mentioned in some rambling reminiscences about cruising round Ireland is par for the course. For in making such a cruise, the only certainty is that you’re always outward bound for your home port. Beyond that, all things are possible, and connections emerge every which way
Rathlin sunset – getting here on a round Ireland cruise, you’re both outward bound and headed for home. Photo: Al Craig
