It was to have been a simple sea journey on a perfect holiday weekend. Some months ago, Clifden solicitor Emer Joyce left Inishturk South off the Connemara coast to pick up a party of friends who intended to ring in the new year with her on the island, writes Lorna Siggins
She was very familiar with the trip across a 400-yard stretch of water and she had gauged it for a slack tide. The visitors had been told to wait for her at Eyrephort beach. However, the southerly wind which had been forecast appeared to freshen to the southeast, and the visitors were advised to walk north up the shore.
By the time all six were aboard the 5.8m (19ft) motorised currach, conditions were not pleasant. The boat was about 50 yards off the island, when the big wave came. Swamped, all six ended up in the water, and two of them swam to the island. A neighbour, Brian Hughes, who had travelled in from Inishturbot, raised the alarm, and the Clifden lifeboat was on hand in minutes.
"Textbook" was how John Roberts, then Clifden lifeboat operations manager, described the rescue. All six had been wearing lifejackets and four had clung to the upturned hull. However, the sea had been cold and rough, and coxswain Bernard Whelan wasn't sure if they could have hung on much longer. As it was, a couple were taken by helicopter to hospital where they were treated for hypothermia.
It's the sort of experience that anyone would want to forget. A rescue helicopter pilot told me once that for all the letters of thanks he received, there were as many fortunate survivors who preferred to airbrush such experiences from memory. Not so with Emer Joyce, who decided to express her gratitude by organising a fund-raiser, with the help of two dozen muscular oarsmen and women from south Connemara.
And so the invitation, when it came, was not one to refuse. The "marathon" in three-man currachs would take place in Clifden Bay, with all money raised being shared equally between Clifden lifeboat and the Carna and the islands lifeboat fund. A "short row with two experienced crew" to the "White Lady" at the mouth of the bay and back, she told me and a number of other willing victims, including several members of the legal profession who shared connections with the sea.
The elements curtailed the route, thankfully, and perhaps it was just as well that no one warned us it was always going to be a race. "The rowers in their shirts were bending red deal and ash," was how the early 20th-century writer Seamas Mac an Iomaire described one such contest in his epic The Shores of Connemara. "Sometimes, the boats would get tangled in each other and that's when there was noise and commotion, oars and tholepins breaking and boats crashing into one another. They would free each other again and would start rowing, pulling the oars long and fast. . "
The Atlantic being a great leveller, even the knuckles of a Supreme Court judge would not have survived unscathed. Thanks to oarswoman Aisling Barrett and company, a potential tangle or two involving my currach, uimhir a 3, was neatly avoided as the sea-kind craft skimmed through the water, miraculously rounding the mark without a bump. With her committee comprising Michael Barrett of Lettermullen and Kathleen Villiers-Tuthill of Clifden, Emer Joyce raised just over €30,000 for the two lifeboat funds. The nephew of one of the participants offered €20 of his confirmation money to the cause.
Emer pays great tribute to the south Connemara rowing community, including a number of inshore fishermen. They may be hearing from her again, she warns, as she has just bought two racing currachs for the embryonic Inish Turk South Ladies Rowing club.
A bit further north, fishermen from Achill have been preparing for a sponsored circuit of their island today. The voyage is expected to take about six hours, with a crew of three on each vessel. Supervising the preparations have been Jason Weir (12), a patient at Crumlin children's hospital, Dublin, and Catherine Gallagher (10), who has been attending Temple Street hospital, also since birth.
Jason underwent open heart surgery in Crumlin last November, while Catherine had telescopic spinal rods inserted in her when she was six years old to improve her mobility. Achill islander Michael John Masterson, skipper of the Eilis, engaged the support of skippers Damien Madden, Michael Farrell Gallagher, Anthony McNamara and Stephen Madden in the event to raise funds for the two hospitals.
Further north again, sculptor Holger Lonze from Portadown, Co Armagh, is also launching from Teelin harbour in south Donegal. Weather permitting, he and his crew of two - Armagh-based photographer and writer Anne Burke, and Kerry writer Danny Sheehy - intend to complete the first leg of a cultural journey by currach from Donegal to Scotland in the wake of 7th-century monks bound for Iona and beyond.
The 7.8 metre (26-foot) naomhóg was built by Lonze in Cavan, and the artists are embracing the concept of "slow travel", which allows for "considerate interaction with the environment, people and culture", he explains. The group will record and reflect their experience by sail and oar for a collaborative exhibition and publication, involving poetry, writing, photography, drawing and sculpture - a sort of salt-washed, multimedia ship's log.