Ten Years Before the Wind
Ten years ago Barry Kenny retired and came back to sailing when he was gifted a Leisure 17. She was a DMYC boat and so he joined the club.
Since then he has cruised Lady B his own Sadler 32 around these waters, including a circumnavigation of Ireland, changed her for Ghillemar, a Malo 36 which he bought in Workum on the Ijsselmeer in Holland and sailed home. He has sailed her around the Cork and Kerry coast as well as to France, and this Summer cruised the Outer Hebrides.
In between times he has sailed and chartered in Greece in the Ionian and Cyclades, in Croatia, and in the Caribbean. He has sailed all of the Canaries from Graciosa to El Hierro, and the Cape Verde Islands. He crewed on upwind passages from Tenerife to Gibraltar, and from Ponta Delgada in the Azores to Falmouth.
Ghillemar is named for the personage in the gaelic song “Se mo Laoch mo Ghille Mear “ better known as the Specsavers tune – the one where the dog is sheared with the sheep. Ghillemar roughly translates as My Swift Bright One, not a bad name for a boat. In the song it is really a reference to Bonny Prince Charlie, so where better to sail this year than to retrace some of his steps in the Hebrides, where he famously sailed Over the Sea to Skye.
On Thursday next Barry will talk about his cruising experiences with DMYC and describe this years cruise to the Hebrides when our own Boathouse captain Dennis Nolan joined him on the outbound leg to Barra.