Len Sheil – “Skipper” to his many friends for as long as anyone can remember – was the very embodiment of Dun Laoghaire sailing with a cruising emphasis, as his father Commander Richard Sheil RNR, was Harbour Master of the unique and extensive “artificial yet natural” port from 1938 to 1948. Thus young Len’s already close relationship with the Dun Laoghaire way with boats was at a particularly intensive stage during his most formative years from the age of four to 14 when his father was in the Harbour Office, thereby adding to the intensity of his relationship with his home place. And at the end of this special time, the son was already moving from peak parental influence in the maritime sphere to having his own circle of friends around boats, the sea, and with Dun Laoghaire in all its many manifestations, reinforcing it as a central element in his character for all of his 88 years.

MERCHANT MARINE

In fact, the only time he was away from year-round living in Dun Laoghaire was the seven years he spent with the Merchant Marine as a Marconi Radio Officer, including time with Irish Shipping, when that very special company was in its golden years, his radio speciality providing him with several global circumnavigations and more than 30 crossings of the Atlantic.

Initially, his sailing and early racing had been with his older brother David in a venerable clinker-built craft, a former motorized harbour launch which, at the end of its working life, had been re-born as a useful sailing dinghy, complete unto a bowsprit, and named Popeye.

The first co-command – with brother David, Len brings the former motorized harbour launch Popeye into the little harbour at Blackrock on a rising tide, with his father, the Dun Laoghaire Harbour-Master, taking the lines. Photo: Hazel Sheil

This had been at a time when new boats were completely unavailable, so the conversion of Popeye was ingenious. But as Fireflies and IDRA 14s began to spread into the Dun Laoghaire fleet, Len and David joined them to race from the Royal St George Yacht Club during the 1950s and early ’60s.

After sea service, he began to build a shore career in the insurance industry, working first in an established brokerage and then setting up his own healthily developing firm. This was something that he found so satisfying that even when supposedly retired with a free travel pass should he wish to use it, he was soon dabbling as a successful business pioneer in the video rental business.

NATIONAL YACHT CLUB & IRISH CRUISING CLUB

Domestic life was a natural for him, and at his passing he’d been married to Hazel Roche for 63 years. With a home in Glenageary, he’d transferred his sailing centre to the National Yacht Club, as it is most directly the Glenageary district’s natural link to the sea. He found the cruising element in that congenial club to be his place of special friendship, such that when he ordered a new 25ft cruising sloop from builders in Itchenor on Chichester Harbour in Sussex, his NYC friends Aidan Dunne and Bill Crosbie, together with Hazel’s brother Charlie Roche, readily joined up to help him sail her home.

The new boat was named Gailey Bay after the extensive inlet on the west shore of Lough Ree where Hazel’s family had formerly been so involved with inland waterways high summer sailing that they used to stage their own regattas there. Len himself was meanwhile being drawn into sailing administration of a different kind, as he joined the Irish Cruising Club in 1968 and he and his friend Aidan Dunn were to form a key administrative double act for the ICC for many years as it approached its Golden Jubilee in 1979, with Aidan as Honorary Secretary and Len as Honorary Treasurer.

THE TOTAL CRUISING FAMILY

The complete picture of the Sheil clan as a model cruising family came in 1975, when they’d a classic all-ages family cruise to Scotland with Gailey Bay, which Hazel wrote up for the ICC Annual. With all four children – Lenny (13), Bobby (10), Gilly (8) and Susie (4) on the strength, the little headroom-lacking boat was at her ship’s company number limits. But by taking the interesting route north from Dun Laoghaire to Peel in the Isle of Man and then Portpatrick in southwest Scotland, they were lined up to access the “real” West Coast via the Crinan Canal – an ideal project as its workings fascinate young sailors, and you make new friends at every lock.

The Skipper – Len Sheil as his friends remember him, living for the moment and enjoying every second of it. Photo courtesy Hazel Sheil

They were to use 23 new anchorages in all, with a highlight being a visit rowing their own dinghy into Fingal’s Cave on Staffa, an experience so unique to cruising your own boat that it puts any visit to Staffa’s related geological formations of the Giant’s Causeway on Ireland’s north coast into the ha’penny place.

Other notable cruises in “the little blue boat with all the children” were to West Cork where, in Courtmacsherry, they were to strike up a lifelong friendship with explorer Tim Severin. But the immaculately-maintained Gailey Bay – with which Len was able to demonstrate the truth of his dictum that the most important additive in perfect varnish work was elbow-grease - had very rapidly passed the stage of being suitable for a growing family with rising cruising aspirations, and Len and Hazel found their dreamship in the Holman-designed full-headroom all-wood Sterling 28 Gay Gannet, which they bought from Mungo Park.

“The little blue boat with all the children in it” – Gailey Bay in North Harbour, Cape Clear, in 1972 Photo: Courtesy Hazel Sheil

Prior to the Park ownership, Gay Gannet had been for many years in the fastidious hands of Jack Wolfe, and Len was if anything determined to raise the already high standards of maintenance. Thus she was a natural star at events like the Glandore Classic Regatta, where she not only was in the frame in the concours d’elegance category, but won races as well.

And on a broader canvas, she was well able for husband-and-wife ventures, such as round Ireland multi-stop circuits and intriguing cruising voyages to other locations “beyond the seas”, during which any fellow cruising enthusiast would be enriched by meeting up with the Skipper and Hazel, as their quiet yet total enthusiasm for this special way of life was an inspiration and encouragement for all cruising folk.

Although he was slowing down on his active involvement in sailing by his late seventies, Len continued as a highly-respected senior figure in the Dun Laoghaire maritime scene, and he and Hazel were regular and popular supporters of the National Yacht Club and its hospitality facilities right to the end, when he was also known to be continuing to practice his radio-signalling skills as an ongoing mental exercise.

Len “Skipper” Sheil was a benign and quietly inspiring presence, a beneficial influence for many simply by being himself. He will be much missed, and our heartfelt condolences go to Hazel and his family and his very many friends.

WMN