Sailing for sport in Connemara has long tended to be in a world of its own with the local traditional craft, but 2023 is very much a breakout year. One of our “Sailors of the Month” for July was the west’s Aongus O Cualain’s, who brought his optimised classic gleoiteog Blat na hOige to the Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Asgard Plate Race, and won overall against a fleet of every sort of gaff-rigged boat. And now in September, the growing Flying Fifteen fleet in Kilkieran has made it to the top, with Niall & Ronan O’Briain of Flying Fifteen Chonamara winning a very hard-fought Irish Flying Fifteen Nationals at County Antrim Yacht Club in Whitehead on Belfast Lough.
Whitehead is about as far from Connemara as you’ll get Flying Fifteen racing in Ireland, but if anything, the distance provided an added incentive to put down an important marker in the progress towards a more broadly-based outward-looking sailing picture in the far west.
