Riding the Crest of the Wave

THOMAS CONWAY gets a taste of life on the lake at the annual Lough Derg Yacht Club Regatta and what makes Sailing such a popular past-time.

It’s been said a thousand times, but it still rings true: sailing isn’t just a pastime, or even a sport, it’s a way of life.

One morning down in Dromineer, at Lough Derg Yacht Club (LYDC), is enough to corroborate that statement. Last week, the club hosted its annual regatta, a six-day bonanza of sailing, socialising, and general merriment, which caters for all ages, from children to adult. On Friday, this correspondent was whisked out onto the water for a personal tour of the action. It was an experience to savour - cold and windswept, but also invigorating and uniquely fascinating.

Now is a good time to talk sailing. Just a couple of weeks ago the entire country was hooked on the Olympic Games, watching intently as our sailors, Robert Dixon and Seán Waddilove, skimmed their way around a circuit on the waters of the Med, just off Marseille. The Irish duo were medal hopefuls, and for a while it looked on, but success didn’t transpire. Ultimately, they finished fourth - an agonising end to a brilliant display of craftsmanship on the water.

But Dixon and Waddilove aren’t the only sailors on this island. Thousands of fellow enthusiasts were inspired by their feat, and they can be found whizzing around our lakes and seas throughout the summer, competing at events like LYDC’s week-long regatta. It’s not Olympic sailing - there are no cameras and or podium presentations, but the standard is still high, as it was in Dromineer all of last week.

However, it’s the people that make it special. People like Joe O’Byrne, long-time sailors with an ardent passion for the sport, for the lifestyle, for everything and anything to do with sailing. Joe is one of the first to arrive this Friday morning, and he fills your correspondent in on his evolution in the sport. He’s a Dublin man who comes down to Lough Derg almost every weekend. He fell in love with these waters years ago, but he started his career in a different arena, off the coast of West Cork.

“I started when I was about nineteen, and I’m now 71, so yes, I’ve been sailing that long,” he began.

“I started sailing with Glenanes, which was a club that was based in West Cork, but they used to keep their boats up on Lough Derg for the winter. And the reason they did that is they had boats called ‘musketeers,’ which is a certain type of sailing boat. The waters off West Cork were obviously very rough throughout the winter, but Lough Derg is very safe all year round. So, they figured they’d store them on the lake to keep the boats safe.

“We used to go over to Mountshannon, and we’d spend weekends there, on the boat. So that’s how I got into it, and then I started sailing in Dun Laoghaire, but when I retired, I had a friend down in Portroe who kept a boat down in Garrykennedy. So, I became a member in Garrykennedy, and then subsequently joined Lough Derg Yacht Club here in Dromineer.”

Joe has an encyclopaedic knowledge of LYDC, an appreciation of its rich history and early foundations. The modern-day club is thriving - that much is evident from the rows of boats stacked next to one another near the water’s edge. There’s an eclectic variety of vessels on display, but as Joe explains, there’s also a diverse array of people to whom the club is now home. Not like in the past, when sailing was very much an exclusive past-time.

“This club, here in Dromineer, goes back to 1840, it’s been here for many lifetimes,” Joe reveals.

“So, there’s been a tradition of sailing here, and years ago, it was the landed gentry that did the sailing, but now it’s very much a community club. Everybody is involved and it’s inclusive. We have people here from all different backgrounds, all walks of life, young and old. And we have programmes or courses for everyone. For instance, the junior courses run in July, go on for about six weeks, and all the juniors do their training, and they have instructors down here. It’s a great couple of weeks - there could be sixty, seventy kids out on the water. It’s really popular.”

Coming from afar

As Joe and I sit chatting on the balcony overlooking the harbour, another group of sailors approach, clearly eager for conversation. Amongst them is Morgan Coe, a distant traveller from a foreign land, who has traded the waters of Lake Ontario in Canada for the expanse of Lough Derg. She’s been here on holidays for a couple of weeks, and she’s been impressed by the country she’s witnessed, particularly its verdant landscapes and general greenness.

“This is my first morning - I’m a rookie,” she revealed.

“But I sail over in Canada, on Lake Ontario, one of the great lakes. And that’s where I’m from as well, Ontario. It’s a beautiful country, Canada, but it’s not as green as Ireland, I can tell you that!”

Preparing to accompany Morgan out on the water is Dromineer native Paraic Slattery, another of LYDC’s accomplished sailors who has risen up through the ranks and commanded a variety of different vessels on route. Many people forge the impression that sailing is just about the wind. It is, in part, but it’s the boats that really matter. And the range of units on display in Dromineer is absolutely fascinating, as Paraic succinctly explains.

“I’m from Dromineer, so I started sailing when I was about eleven,” he said.

“I started off in the ‘Optimists,’ which are kind of like small dinghy boats, then worked my way up to the Lasers, and then eventually on to the Shannon One designs. The Shannon One designs are a heritage boat, they’re the oldest boat here. The oldest one here is actually 102 years old, and they were all hand-built on the lakes - Lough Derg, Lough Ree, and Lough Corrib is where the fleet is. But they’re very good, they’re competitive boats as well.”

Paraic’s life is steeped in the water. He works with the Coast Guard, piloting the rescue helicopter from its base in Shannon. It’s intensive and demanding, highly pressurised with little margin for error, but he loves it. The work is stimulating he says, and you learn to adapt to its high-octane nature.

“It’s a 24/7 service and we work 24 hour shifts. We work overnights and all that,” he says of his work.

“There are four bases in Ireland, and we cover the whole island of Ireland and the Search & Rescue region. But most of our stuff is maritime search & rescue, and then we’re into the mountains, the lakes, the rivers - we cover them as well. So yes, there’s a bit too it alright, but we all work together. We work very closely with the RNLI, and the mountain teams and the Gardaí and all of those bodies.”

Fun but competitive

As the clock ticks towards 10:45am, the designated start time for the action, we jump aboard the committee boat and head out on the water. At the helm of the operation, standing tall atop the bow of the vessel is John Leech, the racing director for the week. He’s chatty and outgoing, but for those few minutes prior to start time, there’s a look of intense concentration etched across his face. Getting the boats off to a good start, to a fair start, is far from easy.

To communicate with the fleet, the committee boat uses a variety of different flags - a fascinating means of indicating what to do and when to start. It’s like a language in itself, the language of the water, and it might as well be gibberish to anyone who isn’t familiar with sailing at an in-depth level. But you quickly learn the commands. There’s a flag for everything - stop, go, turn around, abort. They just keep appearing, and the designs are cool too, but this is serious stuff.

Enjoyment is obviously the main priority, but for many of these sailors, both from within the club and outside of it, there’s a burning desire for success. The racing is ruthlessly competitive - it’s all fun and games until the orange flag goes up and the race kicks into action. You can tell, even to the uneducated eye, that the standard is high. Some boats swerve left, others tack right - each of the sailors employ their own tactics in terms of how best to navigate the course.

Finally, as the boats set off, John takes a breather and gets a chance to converse. He’s a busy man over the course of the week, but he enjoys the frenzy of activity.

“As the principal race officer for the regatta - which is six days of racing across the week - my role is to coordinate and organise the racing,” he reveals.

“Essentially, we have a senior fleet, which comprises 25 Shannon One designs, which, as Paraic told you, were built over 100 years ago. In fact, we have one boat which was constructed in 1922, so it’s 102 years old, and it’s still racing very successfully.

“As well as that we have what are known as ‘Squibs,’ and they’re a small, fibreglass, keel boat. They have spinnaker sails, which is a certain type of sail. So that’s the senior fleet - the Shannon Ones and the Squibs. But then inside in the bay we have plenty of Optimists and Lasers for the juniors, and they race in the safety of the bay, because they’re very young - some of them would be only eight years of age.”

John has a deep knowledge of the boats. He also has an in-depth knowledge of Lough Derg. With a few words, he can paint the scene and the surroundings, pointing to various landmarks which together form the racing arena for the week as he describes: “We’re out now near Ryan’s Point, and you can see Hare Island there in the distance. Then you have Dromane on the Clare side, Williamstown, and the Curraceen Islands just here to the front. That’s our race area.

“My role really is to make sure that all the sailors get away with a fair start, and a fair race. And I have to make sure it’s fair, because sometimes you might have to abandon a race, or have a general recall, because the start line wasn’t perfectly straight, or perfectly square to the wind. So, it’s quite technical, the racing. It takes a lot of concentrating and coordinating to get it right, but things are going well today which is great.”

Enjoyment

Once the wind has finally frozen me to the point of hyperthermia, I hitch a lift back to shore aboard a motorboat, driven in style by the one and only Rob White. Rob has been ploughing through the water all week, just taking care of things, assisting anyone who might have capsized or found themselves in distress. His job is a responsible one, but he carries it out with a beaming smile and a jovial sense of humour.

“I really do enjoy it,” Rob says.

“I’ve been coming to the lake, on and off, for more than forty years. And now I’m fortunate enough to live near the lake, so yes, I like to spend time on the lake and mess about in these boats!”

Finally, we arrive back on shore and Rob drops me off just by the clubhouse. Most are out on the water, but there are still people milling around the place - sitting on the balcony sipping coffee, watching the juniors whizzing around inside the bay, the next Dixon and Waddilove probably among them.

You could do worse than spend your summers out sailing on Lough Derg. It might be a different way of life, another realm from most, but there’s a feeling of euphoria out on the water - when you catch a wind, and the boat starts to accelerate. It really is a way of life, and in Lough Derg Yacht Club it’s open to everyone, irrespective of income or experience. The club is truly inclusive, and the lake they sail on is truly beautiful.