Eccentric boat designer O'Brien Kennedy's picaresque life story attracted fascinated attention when we ran a Sailing on Saturday feature on it ten days ago. But for Professor Felix Muller of Berlin, it was like stumbling on an unexpected oasis in the midst of the desert when he happened on it last weekend.
The Professor had been renewing his until-then frustrating search for more detailed material about a Kennedy-design Kerry Mark II which he bought last summer in the Baltic, a necessary task as the 42-year-old boat came with nothing remotely resembling an owner's manual. However, the little Leitrim-built classic (of which 26 were built in the beamier mainly GRP Mark II version) had passed her survey with flying colours, such that Felix and his crew want to up-grade the boat to pristine condition, and ideally they'd like to have a complete set of plans to do this, or at the very least a fairly detailed original sales brochure.
He has concluded that he owns probably the only Kerry in the entire Baltic, though you'd think there'd probably be one or two others elsewhere in Germany. However, there doesn't seem to be anything like an active Kerry Class Owners Association anywhere, though there are dozens of organisations and products which have the evocative name.
Yet many of these have precious little direct association with the great Kingdom of Kerry that might provide any economic benefit to the citizens thereof, so perhaps this goes some way to explain their sometimes disgruntled attitude towards the people of Ireland in particular, and the rest of the world in general.
And come to think of it, the Kerry 6-tonner fits precisely into this category, so maybe we'd better take this line of thought no further. But meanwhile, in semi-locked-down Berlin, there's a Professor being sustained by thoughts of getting to work on his beloved Kerry down at the old Hanseatic port-town of Stralsund just as soon as possible, and if in the meantime we can forward him further detailed information about the Kerry, it will be a good deed in this wicked world.
If any Kerry 6-tonner owner reading this can help, do please let us know - it will all be done electronically, so you won't lose any precious original documents. Thank you.
Advertisement for the Kerry Mark II in the April 1972 Afloat Magazine. The boat referred to at bottom right as being available for trial sails on Belfast Lough was completed from a bare hull by Frank Smyth at Bangor Shipyard, and was last reported as being based at Oban on the West Coast of Scotland
