Eamon Conneely, who took up sailing just three years ago, hopes that when his new yacht is launched, next month, it will make him one of the fastest men afloat. And he wants to win the Admiral's Cup for Ireland, writes Lorna Siggins
Patches is a small townland, just beyond Claddaghduff, that overlooks Omey Island, in Connemara. When Eamon Conneely was growing up there, one of the 10 children of Tommy Conneely, a small farmer and lobster fisherman, the community amounted to no more than three or four houses. Tommy was skilled with the currach and knew every vagary of tide and weather on the hostile coast. They weren't abilities he was keen to pass on to his offspring, for the Atlantic was no playground. Almost half a century later, however, the ocean has become just that for his second-youngest son.
Later this spring Eamon Conneely, who is now 45, takes delivery of Europe's first Transpac 52, a €1.5 million high-performance boat that is a serious contender for this year's Admiral's Cup, the unofficial world championship of yacht racing. This newspaper's sailing correspondent, David Branigan, calls the yacht's arrival the most exciting development for big-boat racing in Ireland since the 1970s.
Conneely's will be one of a small fleet of Transpac 52s to be built this year. The design is best described as a faster version of the 70-foot Santa Cruz yachts that take part in the TransPac yacht race, from Los Angeles to Honolulu, hence the name of the class. And Conneely is calling his Patches. He grins, eyes dancing, as he repeats the name. "You know Sweeney's bar?" he asks. "Patches is sandwiched between it and Aughrismore, and that's where we were reared: five boys, five girls."
His mother, Annie, is still alive, but he has little physical connection now with a place that could never have supported them all. In fact, he couldn't be further from the Connemara rock and soil, as owner of a construction company that employs up to 300 people in Britain and 250 through direct and indirect labour at home.
So who is this blow-in, with no Royal Irish or Royal Cork yacht club pedigree, who is determined to ensure that west-coast sailors are on the international map? Conneely grins. "I'm a plasterer."
It is barely three years since he began turning up on Wednesday nights for racing at Galway Bay Sailing Club, near Oranmore. "I had a small powerboat when I was in England, but I spent a lot of time building up the business," he says.
After secondary education in Clifden, he learned his trade in Galway and left for England in 1978. "I moved on around Europe, got great experience, and came back to Ireland in 1983 but didn't stay."
He soon returned to Britain, where he decided to settle for at least 10 years. His dry-lining and fit-out company expanded, he got married to Dolores and started a family in Hertfordshire. In 1998 the couple returned to Galway and to Clarinbridge, next to the sea. Conneely has done well from the economic boom. His Irish business, Oyster Homes, now has a €20 million turnover. As well as building houses in Clarinbridge, it is involved in a retail, commercial and residential project in Athenry, has signed up for two projects in Athlone and is contracted for a 170-berth marina with residential units in Carrick-on-Shannon.
Like many returned emigrants, Conneely says his priority now is lifestyle. "Part of the deal when we came back was that we could allow time for that," he says. His wife and daughter took up showjumping, and he and his two sons signed up with Galway Corinthians rugby club. He coaches a youth team twice a week. In 2001 he had his first taste of yacht racing - and was bitten.
"I always wanted to sail, and my twin targets were, and are, the Fastnet, which is part of the Admiral's Cup series, and the Southern Ocean," he says. The Fastnet has fascinated him since 1979, when 17 sailors lost their lives in a surprise storm. In 2002, after "feeling the way" around Galway Bay Sailing Club, he bought Juggernaut, a 37-foot cruiser - and got "the Muppets", the yacht's regular crew, including Robert McDonagh and Ronan Grealish. "Those guys really looked after me, and I have learned so much from them," he says.
His mentors have included John Robertson, with whom he took several Royal Yachting Association courses, and John Killeen, the Galway businessman who chairs Team Ireland, the group organising the Republic's three-boat challenge for the Admiral's Cup. Killeen also introduced him to Jamie Boag, a sailor from Co Down whose wife, the double Olympic gold-winning yachtswoman Shirley Robertson, has joined Conneely's crew as strategist.
Last summer, Conneely found himself competing in the BMW Round Ireland Yacht Race on the chartered Volvo 60-footer skippered by 26-year-old David Nixon, from Howth. A new partnership was born as Nixon drew up plans to put together a team for the Admiral's Cup.
Conneely had already read about the Transpac 52, heralded as a new dawn for grand-prix sailing. He signed an order with Reichel/Pugh, a yacht design company based in San Diego, last August, and the hull is now nearing completion at Green Marine, a company that builds everything from racing yachts to RNLI lifeboats at its yards on the Solent, in southern England. Patches should be launched late next month.
Like many of sailing's VROs - or very rich owners - Conneely knew his boat would require the cream of professional sailors to work with his crew. As Roy Disney, owner of the 86-foot "rocket ship" Pyewacket (another Reichel/Pugh design) put it, sailing at this level means you can't afford to do it badly. So Conneely hired Robertson and Ian Walker, a double Olympic silver medallist and America's Cup helmsman.
Both appeared at the Allianz Direct Boat Show in Dublin last month, when it was confirmed that Team Ireland would comprise Conneely's Transpac 52, a yacht skippered by the Athens Olympic dinghy helmsman Tom Fitzpatrick and a third skippered by David Nixon.
The team must secure a sponsor before its Admiral's Cup entry is guaranteed, however, and each boat also needs financial support. If this doesn't materialise, Patches may compete in the cup under another flag while still flying the Galway Bay Sailing Club burgee.
Conneely is practical about it. "I have had several inquiries from other European teams, because this is the first and only boat of its type in Europe." He is under no illusion about his own participation. "I know I wouldn't be on any team if it wasn't for the fact that I have the boat," he says. He and his crew have started training with Robertson and Walker, but he has no ambition to helm. "I did do the mainsheet on Dark Angel and would hope to do that on Patches, but, as in business, sport requires key people in the right positions, and that is critical for team morale."
One of his ambitions is to have his wife sail with him on the new yacht. The preparatory programme includes the English national championships, the Sovereign's Cup, from Kinsale, and the National Yacht Club's DúLaoghaire to Dingle Race, for which Patches is favourite.
After the Admiral's Cup, in July, and the Fastnet, in early August, Conneely hopes to take part in the first of the Transpac 52 regattas in Sardinia in late August, the Rolex Middle Sea race in Malta in October and, perhaps, the world championships for the class in Rhode Island next year.
And what would the currach man, his late father, Tommy, think of all this? Conneely doesn't hesitate. "He'd love it, he'd love it. He'd know and understand the thrill and the fun of it all."
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RIDING THE CREST OF A WAVE
The Scottish sailor Shirley Robertson, whom Eamon Conneely has hired to join his professional crew for Ireland's Admiral's Cup bid, is the first British sportswoman to win gold medals at successive Olympics, in 2004 and 2000. She had already made history in Sydney, as the first Scotswoman since 1912 to win an Olympic gold and Britain's first female medallist at this level.
Robertson, who was born and brought up in Dundee, began sailing in dinghies on the River Tay. She has now competed in four Olympic Games and has her sights set on Beijing, in 2008. "However, four years is a long time to remain focused, and I need some time to rekindle both my hunger and energy," she said at this year's London Boat Show, where she confirmed plans to spend time competing on larger boats. She has substantial offshore experience already, including the Fastnet race.
She met Conneely through her husband, Jamie Boag, a stockbroker turned yacht broker from Bangor, in Co Down. "Jamie has coached Eamon and is very involved in the Patches project. Eamon hasn't been sailing long, but he has this amazing can-do attitude."
Robertson is delighted to be sailing with Ian Walker, too. "He was my coach at the last Olympics, a medallist himself and a superb yachtsman." Walker is likely to helm and Robertson work as tactician on Patches, but much depends on the next few weeks. "We'll be training on a large boat before Patches is launched, and get to know each other."
As a Scot married to an Irishman, she would love to sail under the tricolour if sponsorship for Team Ireland comes through. "There's going to be enormous interest in Patches in Britain, where even the English Admiral's Cup team is struggling to find a boat to match it. It will be the classiest boat by far on the Solent, and it would be so great to see it flying the Irish flag."