The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Sail away with me: Tralee club in focus
After the Covid-19 lock-down Tralee Bay Sailing Club members are getting their toes back in the water. Paul Brennan spoke to some of the members and sailors
IT’S a Wednesday evening in late June and a small pocket of Fenit is alive with activity. Around thirty people are busy readying themselves for a hour or two on the water. The gathering ranges in age from six-year-olds to sexagenarians, spread in among the gleaming array of dinghies, oppies, toppers and lasers. Some are togged out in wetsuits and life-jackets and waterproof boots, others are strictly dressed for dry land. Here and there, groups or twos and threes - social distancing well observed - chat away, while others buzz around with a more purposeful stride. Every few minutes a craft is nudged down the slip and moves out over the water until it’s just a white triangle bobbing along with Derrymore Island in the background and Sliabh Mish beyond that. This is Tralee Bay Sailing Club and these are its disciples...
Rachel Deasy took to sailing like a duck to water. She hadn’t a choice, really. Her grandfather, Bill O’Mahony, was an admiral in the Royal Cork Yacht Club. Her parents are sailors too. Rachel was probably in a sailing boat before she could ride a bicycle.
From Caherslee in Tralee, Deasy says that sailing is almost a rite of passage in her family, and even prospective in-laws have been taken out on the water to determine if their sea legs were worthy of full family membership.
Still just 20 years of age, the UCC law student is an accomplished sailor, so much so that she is a qualified instructor at Tralee Bay Sailing Club (TBSC) and is presently helping run the summer camps in the Maritime Centre in Fenit. The camps are five days of sailing and associated instruction for children from the age of about six to sixteen, though she says there is no particular upper age limit. The camps cater for those who have never stepped into a boat up to advanced boat handling, and while last year they had participants from Boston and Singapore learning to sail in Tralee Bay, this year - given the Covid-19 pandemic and associated issues - the take up is almost exclusively by local children. And that’s the message here: sailing is for everyone, male, female, young, old, those with a competitive streak and those just wanting a leisurely pastime, and contrary to what one might think, it’s not expensive or prohibitively costly to get into.
Club commodore Liam Lynch stresses that there is no joining fee, and the cost of full annual membership is considerably lower than that of many golf clubs. He says that anyone can come along and try out sailing a few times at no cost, and if anyone does become a member, the club has boats they can use without having to purchase their own.
“You can go sailing at a serious level for a lot less than it might cost to play golf,” Lynch says. “People do view (sailing) as a very expensive sport, and if you want to go any buy your own tripped up keel boat, of course you can spend a lot of money. But the point is that you can take up sailing and go sailing here or anywhere around the country for not an awful lot of money. The big expense for people starting off is the suit, waterproofs, the life-jacket. A very good life-jacket is well worth the money, for obvious reasons, but that’s it. You’ll always find someone who is looking for crew, they’ll train you up. What happens to people, like what happened with me, is I came out just to have a look, then my kids got involved, and my wife got involved and the next thing I had two boats, and three boats, and four boats...I’m down to two now...but it is not an expensive sport. For what you’d spend to join a gym you’d join this club, you’d have all the kit you need and you’d be out sailing a couple of times a week. And we’re always keen to welcome new members.”
Those new members Commodore Lynch speaks of, Rachel Deasy takes under her wing. While the summer camps often give new comers their first taste of the sea air and the salt water, there are several who are already making big waves at a young age.
Sailing can be a tough, physically demanding sport, but it doesn’t discriminate against age or gender. And in Tralee Bay Sailing Club the sisters are doing it for themselves. In some cases that’s literally the case.
Sisters Eimer and Riona McMurrow-Moriarty are two of the top young sailors in TBSC. Mention of their names has Rachel Deasy gushing with admiration.
“They are crushing it,” Deasy says of the siblings. Eimer only recently moved out of oppies and she was insane. She was doing all these competitions up and down the country, she was winning things left, right and centre. She was just incredible, and she is really committed to it. Being a rural club it’s rare that we get to host events here so she was travelling everywhere from Belfast to Dublin to Cork, it takes a lot of commitment.
“Then there’s Ellie Cunnane. She’s phenomenal. She’s three years younger than me and she’s the one dragging me out racing all the time. She won a bunch of races last year, and she’s doing well again this year. The benefit of being a girl is that often you’re lighter than the lads, but she’s also just as strong as them, so she just flies through the water.”
Cunnane has already donned the green jersey, having represented Ireland in the Youth World Championships in Gdynia, Poland in 2018, and she’s a shining example of TBSC’s commitment to bringing girls on board and of boosting the club’s female membership.
Deasy name checks other female sailors in the club, from Sophie Brown, who is a few years older than Rachel and who was an inspiration for the Tralee woman, to Sadhbh Murphy, a 10-year-old novice who Deasy claims is a natural and prodigious talent.
Suffice to say, there are plenty of young boys and grown men sailing and competing to a very high level too around Tralee Bay, but though they may be small in number, the females are making plenty of waves too. It’s just that the club would like more of them to drop by and try out the sport.
Indeed, while Liam Lynch is Club Commodore for the rest of 2020, there is a strong female representation at committee level in the club. In fact, one of Lynch’s predecessors, Breda Clifford, was not only the first female Commodore of Tralee Bay Sailing Club in 1984, but it’s widely accepted that she was the first female Commodore anywhere in world yachting. She was invited to Downing Street by Ted Heath and to the US Naval Headquarters to mark the 1500th anniversary of St Brendan’s voyage to the New World. St Brendan, Breda discovered, is the
patron saint of the US Navy, and she amazed the US sailors when she visited, because at that time women could not even become members in many yacht clubs, never mind rise to the rank of Commodore.
Founded in 1956 by a group of local enthusiasts, Tralee Bay Sailing Club club now boasts a vibrant and expanding membership of over 200 active members.
The iconic clubhouse overlooks Tralee Bay with panoramic views left to Blennerville Windmill, across the Maharees and westward to Brandon Point. It is the combination of this spectacular backdrop together with the protected inshore waters of Tralee Bay that provides a tremendous venue for competitive sailing events such as National Championships, WIORA (West of Ireland offshore Racing) and more.
In addition to the TBSC clubhouse, with changing rooms, showers, kitchen, storage and licensed bar, the adjacent Fenit Harbour provides a sheltered 120 berth marina with associated facilities.
Paddy O’Sullivan - an accomplished sailor - was one of the founding members back in ’56, and today his daughter Mary herself a talented sailor - keeps a watchful eye on the next generation as they make their first splash into the world of sailing.
“It’s an equal opportunities sport,” Mary says. “Like most sports, I suppose, sailing doesn’t discriminate. Anyone young or old, male or female, whatever your ability, there’s a type of sailing for everyone. I started out in a wooden mirror dinghy when I was 10 or 11 and I moved on from there. The younger people now who want a bit of speed might go for a laser. Others who want to sail around with a few crew on board will opt for a keel boat. There’s something for everyone.”
Dinghy Secretary Cormac Murphy, who is a relative new-comer to sailing, impresses the value of the sport on the younger participants.
“I couldn’t emphasise the impact of sailing on children’s self-esteem and self-confidence. When they crack it you really see their confidence thrive. You’re captain of your own boat out there. When you conquer it out there on the water you carry that with you in the rest of your development as a child. You’re captain of your own boat,” he says.
Sail on...