A Connemara nurse aims to raise funds for the Aran lifeboat by swimming solo across Gregory’s Sound.
As The Irish Independent reports, Barbara Conneely O’Brien, who is from a well-known Aran island fishing family, hopes to swim the three-kilometre tidal stretch between Inis Meáin and Inis Mór when the weather is suitable.
She has been training daily for “Snámh an tSunda”, as her swim is called, and has had a “fair few lashes” of Compass jellyfish over the last few weeks.
“I couldn’t even put my head in water before Covid-19 and practised using a bowl on the kitchen table,” she told the newspaper.
Conneely O’Brien lives in An Cheathrú Rua, and several of her siblings, including her sister Clíona, have made a career at sea.
Her late father, Gregory, survived a serious deck accident and was also involved in the rescue of one of his own boats, which went up on rocks off Inis Mór while his wife, Maggie, was about to deliver their first child.
Known as Sunda Ghríora in Irish, Gregory’s Sound is named after a hermit who lived on Inis Meáin.
Gregory’s mouth is reputed to have been turned to gold after he bit his bottom lip off in a fit of anguish over his sins, and he asked that his body be thrown into the sea in a cask on his death.
The cask landed across at Port Daibhche on Inis Mór – the same landing point that Conneely O’Brien is aiming for after she sets off from Inis Meáin.
The stretch of water has a north-east/south-west tidal stream, and was once plied by emigrant ships leaving Ireland for North America.
However, it can have confused seas in certain weather conditions, and so Conneely O’Brien has set a window of this week from August 7th to select a day to complete her swim.
She will be accompanied by her brother John Conneely, a fisherman, in a 21ft half-decker, Lady Luck.
She wants to pay tribute to RNLI volunteers, and wants to honour the memories of all of those who have died as a result of tragedies at sea.
So far, she has raised over 4,000 euro of her 5,000 euro target.
Read The Irish Independent here