This week’s election of Annamarie Fegan as Admiral of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, the first woman sailor to fill the top posting in this extraordinary organisation’s 304-year history, is remarkable in that it doesn’t seem to have been seen within the sailing community in Ireland as something particularly remarkable at all.

Admittedly it has been well-signalled years in advance, thanks to the Royal Cork’s steady officer-promotion process. And if anything, that quietly reliable process is the club’s most remarkable feature. The Royal Cork’s continuing throughput of very able and multi-talented voluntary officers at all levels, and in every area of interest and activity in the complex functioning of this globally significant club, is a wonder to behold.

For although the RCYC may be global in outlook with an understandably large overseas membership keen to be part of this unique organisation, the fully-active home membership available to keep the wheels turning by renewing the active officer throughput is numerically quite small, even in comparison with some other Irish clubs.

Like every RCYC Admiral in modern times, Annamarie Fegan has worked her way steadily up through the voluntary ranks that fill the busy officer roles and run both the main committee and the essential sub-committees. Her own involvement afloat began with the demanding sport of coastal rowing from Crosshaven, and a key part of her policy as Admiral is encouraging newcomers into sailing Photo: Robert Bateman

Yet the new Admiral has already well proven herself in key positions in the administrative hierarchy, both during and before the times of her immediate predecessors Colin Morehead and Kieran O’Connell, who were in the two-year office when the club was weathering and then emerging from the lockdown of much of its activities during the covid pandemic.

ROYAL CORK’S COURAGEOUS RESPONSE TO PANDEMIC

That this should have been at its most intense during the RCYC’s keenly-anticipated Tricentenary Year of 2020 would have severely tested the mettle of any organisation. But as we recently observed, in the context of another leading Irish female sailor overcoming a very challenging situation that threatened to deprive her of a world title in the final race of a very tough series, if courage is grace under pressure, then the Royal Cork rose above its problems with a grace that was the very real expression of group courage. The spirit of the ancient club in those ultra-challenging times was an inspiration for everyone.

Running the Royal Cork YC’s contemporary marina/clubhouse complex is a business in itself, and in the challenging lockdown period, the Club responded in a graceful and courageous way to the almost total cancellation of its long-planned Tricentenary. Photo: Robert Bateman

And then, as the levels of permissible sailing expanded post-pandemic, with offshore racing one area in which a relatively high level of activity could be resumed, it was Annamarie Fegan and her husband Denis Murphy and their two keen-sailing daughters Molly and Mia with the family’s much-loved Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo who led the charge, their successes including the 2021 Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race overall win.

The surest indicator that Cork Harbour was slowly returning to normal life. Nieulargo racing in the first post-pandemic Thursday evening race from Crosshaven, and with a woman helm too. Photo: Robert Bateman

TRADITIONALLY SALUTED VICTORY FOLLOWED BY BEST FASTNET RACE START

This was an inspiration to all sailing, such that then-Admiral Colin Morehead revived an old Royal Cork tradition of the 1800s by providing Nieulargo with a socially-distance-compliant three gun salute when the boat returned in glory to Crosshaven. But it emerged that that the Nieulargo crew were only starting in leading the post-pandemic sailing revival, for when the Fastnet Race got going in August, screen-viewers worldwide following the live stream had a brief but very real glimpse of Nieulargo getting the best start of the entire fleet.

The challenge of a Fastnet Race start into a sou’wester at Cowes is to arrive spot on at the inner end of the line, close under the RYS battery, with all rights to be on port tack only in a very narrow window. In the 2021 Fastnet, Nieulargo was officially recorded on the live stream as doing this beautifully to have the best start of the entire fleet

By that time, the fact that Nieulargo always had at least three women in the crew, including long stints with one of them helming, had long since ceased to be a matter of comment in the sailing community. But then, female sailors have long had a special position in Irish sailing. Or more accurately, they have a position that would be regarded as special elsewhere, but is the norm here to such an extent that the elevation of Admiral Fegan in Crosshaven has arguably more to do with her exceptional sailing, administrative and can-do abilities, coupled with her infectious enthusiasm, than anything else.

An RS21 in full cry. The major significance of the RCYC Volvo Cork Week 2024 is underlined by the fact that this expanding class sees racing in Cork Harbour’s top regatta as an essential part of its international development

And 2024 is going to be an extra-busy sailing busy year for the Royal Cork YC, bringing the highlight of the Biennial Volvo Cork Week from 15th to 19th July, with the Youth Nationals before that on April 4th to 7th. Cork Week is being fed entries by two passage races, one from Falmouth, and the other a re-enacting of the pioneering Dublin Bay to Cork Harbour Race of 1860, the “Kingstown to Queenstown”. And all of this is in addition to a busy home programme which has been a big part of life around Cork Harbour for centuries.

LONG TRADITION OF GENDER EQUALITY IN SOME OF IRELAND’S SAILING

They’ll be so busy at Cork Week that only the visitors from newer sailing areas with older attitudes will have the time to comment that there’s anything special about the historic hosting club having a female Admiral. For in Ireland, we’ve seen women office holders in many of the leading official positions in other important sailing organisations for half a century and more.

And while this column may sometimes seem to go over the top in enthusiasm for the maritime achievements of Grace O’Malley, the 16th Century “pirate” queen of Connacht, there is no doubt that she was a real force afloat and along the coast of the Atlantic seaboard, with plenty of tangible evidence of her existence and achievement to influence a gender-equal outlook in the Irish maritime mindset.

The new Admiral as just another crew, third from bow on Nieulargo’s weather rail. Photo: Rick Tomlinson

In more modern times, the world’s oldest One-Design class, the 1887-founded Dublin Bay Water Wags, has always seemed to set the pace in the best way possible, by sailing along as though gender differences were not of significant importance, and certainly not in the matter of who did what in the sailing of the boats. This has been such that as long ago as 1894, Yachting World magazine ran a feature about the female Wag sailors’ achievements to which we referred here

This may have been the situation because it’s possible that being a premises-free organisation provides greater natural freedom, whereas having a club operating through its own bricks-and-mortar clubhouse tends to emphasise gender differences in the rules and regulations.

EQUAL BUT DIFFERENT

Nowadays, no reasonable person claims that the sexes are anything other than equal. But only an unreasonable person would claim that they’re the same, and thus their basic shoreside needs are slightly different, thereby reinforcing any still extant dinosaur notion that one gender is necessarily superior to another.

But without a clubhouse, the simple lack of a need to define separate areas made gender equality the normal state of affairs, and today senior non-clubhouse organisations like Dublin Bay Sailing Club (founded 1884), the Water Wags (1887) and the Irish Cruising Club (1929) continue go about their activities with what may seem like a notably modern outlook on the interacting sailing roles of women and men, and their shared entitlement to play a full part in every aspect of the organisation’s functioning, both afloat and ashore.

The Water Wags of Dublin Bay may seem incredibly ancient to those seeing them for the first time, yet they have always been effectively gender-blind, and here they are shaping up for a typical Wedneday evening start in Dun Laoghaire Harbour with Mandy Chambers’ new-built No 50 nearest camera

Nevertheless there’s the inescapable fact that the average female sailor lacks the sheer physical strength of the average male sailor. But please note that we’re talking averages here. There is of course a large area of overlap, where a super-fit and highly motivated female sailor like Steph Lyons (originally of Kinsale YC) was far and away the first choice for bowman (her own choice of job description) on the successful Cookson 12 Calibre in the recent Sydney-Hobart Race.

Steph Lyons may be in her favourite crewing position on the bow here in Sydney Harbour’s sheltered waters, but she has now logged four successful if sometimes very rough Sydney-Hobart races in this demanding role

CAHALAN’S HOBART COURSE A WORK OF ART

In that same super-tough race, Offaly-born Adrienne Cahalan was navigator/tactician on the overall winning RP 66 Alive. The course she plotted, through a rapidly-changing wind and weather situation in her 31st race to Hobart, was such a masterpiece of creative interpretation and appropriate action that they really should find some way of turning it into some form of inter-active art, and enter it for the next Turner Prize.

Navigational superstar. Adriennne Cahalan’s 31st Sydney-Hobart aboard the RP66 Alive brought her yet another overall win

Thus we find that nowadays the truly able women sailors have proven themselves the equal or better than the men, particularly when it comes to post-success communication. Even the youngest Irish international female sailing star seems to have the natural empathy that enables her to handle the media rather better than many of the most senior male sailing stars. Yet it remains an inescapable fact that Ireland’s supposedly supreme sailing contest, the Championship of Champions, has only once been won by a woman in its 77 years, and that was Howth’s Laura Dillon way back in 1996.

BONDING WITH SPECIFIC BOAT TYPES

But it might be that an ability to maintain a high level of helming performance through differing boat types is a situation where real gender differences do arise. Laura has always been exceptionally competent in steering successfully with whatever boat she might find herself in, with her current range including the tiller-steered J/99 Snapshot and the vintage wheel-steered S&S 41 classic Winsome.

The ultra-versatile helm Laura Dillon is still the only female sailor to have won Ireland’s Championship of Champions

Yet many sailors – both women and men – are much affected by the fact that sailing is a vehicle sport, and they’re at their best in the particular floating vehicle with which they feel a special bond. Thus, in a world in which nearly 150 different boat classes are officially recognised as being of sufficient international significance to merit their own World Championship, it’s confusing for outsiders.

For it means we have a bewildering number of World Champions in sailing, a situation made even more complex in that we’re fully aware that where those champions do step into another type of boat, they might never repeat their previous greatness. The apparent situation where this seems to affect women sailors more than men may be something we may have to accept, without making a song and dance about it.

The reality is that in the big picture of sailing in Ireland , we have been moving towards general gender equality – or even gender blindness – for very many years, albeit sometimes with glacial speed, but towards it nevertheless. Certainly there are times when you might think there’s some truth to the recent conclusion of a United Nations Committee that it will take another 286 years to close the gender gap in discriminatory laws, particularly as some countries now seem to be very deliberately going full astern.

IRELAND’S INTERNATIONAL FEMALE SAILORS ON TOP OF THE PACE

Be that as it may, another “more optimistic” time of 132 years is small consolation, but there’s real encouragement in Ireland’s sailing scene in which in terms of international results, women are out-pacing men. Of course they’re doing much of it in racing in women-only events, but civilised people should be able to cherish people’s differences, while placing a high value on their underlying equality.

Unprecedented. The crowd of well-wishing sailors from all over Ireland who thronged the National YC when Annalise Murphy brought home her Olympic Silver Medal in 2016. Photo: NYC

And the top women sailors seem to be able to enjoy their success in a less self-conscious way. It was natural that everyone should join in the spontaneous jubilation when Annalise Murphy won the Silver Medal in the 2016 Olympics, but the recent parade of sailing success for Ireland led by Eve McMahon, Serena Wright and others has shown an inspiring maturity in communicating the joy of achievement by our young female sailors which few of the males can match.

OLD-TIME LONDON BOAT SHOW REVEALED THE REAL GENDER DIVISION IN DECISION-MAKING

But perhaps the final world on where the genders stand in the sailing world comes from a recollection from the long-gone and much-lamented Earls Court Boat Show in the heart of London in the first part of January every year. It was a setting and a timing which made it both a real breakout from the post-Christmas torpor, and a lively and guaranteed international exchange for some of the most noted movers and shakers in world sailing and its supporting industries.

Earls Court Boat Show in the heart of London was staged annually in January from 1957 until 2007. At its most successful, it became the world of boats and sailing’s leading international information exchange and networking location, and at its heart was the legendary Guinness Stand

Another part of Earls Court was that you could comfortably rely on many of the ordinary punters turning up dressed as though they were about to go sailing. So I once asked a noted London-based cruising man - who was normally dressed - why so many of his compatriots arrived into the old concrete hangar in mid-winter dressed for sailing.

“Because their wives tell them to”, was his immediate reply.

All of which is now a very long way from the smooth changing of the watch down Crosshaven way last Monday night. Congratulations, Admiral Fegan. No better person. The sailors of Crosshaven are lucky. And they know it.

Annamarie Fegan, the new Admiral of the Royal Cork, may mark a change of some significance, but she is in the much stronger Crosshaven tradition of providing years of voluntary service to the club in other posts while steadily rising in the officer hierarchy.

Listen to a podcast with Annamarie Fegan here

“It only took 304 years…”

The words of Royal Cork Yacht Club’s first female admiral, Annamarie Fegan, on her election to the post this week.

As Afloat reports here, Fegan, who already broke new ground in the world’s oldest yacht club when she was elected first female vice-admiral several years ago, was involved in coastal rowing before she took up sailing.

Annamarie Fegan (seated centre) on her election as Royal Cork Yacht Club’s first female admiral Photo: Bob Bateman

The Murphy family yacht Nieulargo during the Rolex Fastnet Race start off Cowes in 2021 Photo: Rick Tomlinson

She credits her daughters Molly and Mia for much of her success on water. Her family crew - the Murphys on Nieulargo – won the Dun Laoghaire-Dingle Race in 2021 and were the best-placed Irish entry in last year’s 50th Fastnet Race.

“It’s amazing to sail with family, but it can be very difficult – the good normally outweighs the bad in spades,” Fegan told Wavelengths.

She has paid tribute to many great volunteers in RCYC over the years, and says she looks forward to working with her new executive.

One of her main goals is to get more people from every walk of life into sailing. You can listen to her interview below.

The Royal Cork’s first female Vice Admiral has spoken of her pride at making history in the world’s oldest yacht club.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, Annamarie Fegan was elected at the club’s 301st AGM in early January.

She is best known in sailing circles as co-owner of Nieulargo with husband Denis Murphy and daughters Molly and Mia.

The boat can count the Dun Laoghaire to Dingle and Fastnet 450 among its victories, and it’s one of the favourites for the Round Ireland Race in 2022.

Fegan will also co-chair Volvo Cork Week 2022 with Ross Deasy.

Speaking to EchoLive.ie, Fegan said of her pioneering new role: “I’m standing on the shoulders of lots of women who didn’t have the same opportunities. There’s a huge surge of support for me from both male and females.”

EchoLive.ie has much more on the story HERE.