Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Ronnie Delany

In 1956, Ronnie Delany won a gold medal in the 1500m race at the Olympics in Melbourne. Now 87, and a vice president of the RNLI, Ronnie takes pride in how he competed for an all-Ireland country as an athlete, and how through his work with the RNLI he’s supporting an all-Ireland charity.

This week, on Wednesday 29 November, the Arklow athlete contributes to the highly acclaimed RNLI 200 Voices podcast with episode 104, titled A Beautiful Thing.

He talks of how the RNLI is apolitical in Ireland, of extraordinary friendships he’s made through the RNLI, and commends the charity’s commitment to saving lives at sea which is in his words “a beautiful thing”.

200 Voices hears people connected to the RNLI in Ireland and those whose lives have been touched by the lifesaving charity.

Hear from locals with a special kinship to their lifeboat station, a crew member who’s been on service for a generation, or the family of someone rescued by an RNLI frontline lifesaver — each episode is sure to take the listener on a journey through a touching story.

Launched in August, the series already features several contributions of Irish interest, including:

Available across all podcast platforms and the RNLI’s website, 200 Voices lets listeners hear from survivors, supporters, volunteers, lifeguards, celebrity ambassadors, historians and many more from across Wales, England, Scotland Ireland and beyond.

To find out more about the RNLI’s bicentenary, visit RNLI.org/200.

Published in RNLI Lifeboats

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.