Category Archives: Sailing

West Cork Launch Sites. No. 1 Ballydehob

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bdhobbridge

Above: Ballydehob’s Iconic 12 Arch Tramway Bridge

I thought that I would do an occasional series on the launch sites and small piers around the West cork coast. Whenever I’m passing near one I usually check them out to see what they’re suitable for. Now I’m going to start photographing them. So that you can get a good idea of how much water there will be I’m going to aim to photograph them around low tide.

It is here.

And Here are some pictures.

ballydehobblogLooking north

As you can see the slip is in good condition and offers at least 5′ at high tide. It is obstructed by mooring lines but these could be moved when launching and retrieving.

bdhobblogLooking east

bdhobblog2Looking West

There is ample space for parking and the area is lit and safe at night. It’s a short 2-3 minute walk to the shop, small hardware shop, launderette, petrol station, restaurants and 7 of the best pubs in Ireland. Click here for information on Ballydehob.

bdchannelThe channel through Ballydehob bay a to Roaringwater bay is marked by bouys and is fairly straight forward. The great thing about Ballydehob is that diesel and petrol are available in the village; this is no longer so in neighboring Schull. Also it is much quieter and picturesque with better shelter than its more famous neighbor. It is restricted in draft and only accessible to smaller craft which is great.

Hope this info. is helpful to some one. And yes I know I should have taken an aerial shot from the bridge. I’ll add that next time.

Restoration of National 18

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I bought this National 18 from a friend of mine. Some friend you might say. It was to replace an old plywood wayfarer that had finally disintegrated ( I could push my finger through the bottom.) after more than 30 years or so. As you can see in the pictures it was in pretty rag order.

liamodonovanofficesuite0033All of the decking had delaminated after being left out uncovered for a good few years and the boat needed a full fitting out.

liamodonovanofficesuite0034

Well it was early June and I wanted to go sailing a soon as possible before the summer ended. So I set to and two weeks later it looked like this.

18boatI redecked the boat, recyled some of the seats from the wayfarer and built new ones. They gave me some very funny looks when I bought a plank of iroko that looked like a boomerang but it was perfect for the rubrail at the gunwale. I was able to use the wayfarer rig, which was a little smaller than the National 18; because I would be single handing a lot. Repainted and varnished the whole lot. I filled in the transom hole as I wanted to keep my feet dry. I’ve been using the boat for 3 summers now and it has performed much better than the wyfarer the extra length and beam make it a lot sturdier and roomy. The design is a 1968 Ian Proctor design that replaced the sleek 1930’s Uffa Fox design of the National 18 which is very nice too. I apologise for the quaity of the photos when I took them I hadn’t intended to put them in blog.

Trip to St Kilda October 2007

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I came across these photos of a trip I did with a friend of mine on his Rival 38 to St Kilda a remote cluster of islands 40 miles west of the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles. I have to say the sail north from Burtonport, Donegal was splendid considering the lateness of the season. Three days with the wind abaft spinnaker up and beautiful mild weather. The only rain we had was when I was off watch; luckily. We arrived at night and spent a rather awful night at anchor with strong gusts coming down off the mountains and blowing the boat in all directions. The view that greeted us in the morning was quite spectacular. At that time of year there are only the RAF members on the Island and the pub was closed. I know an island without a pub, what is the world coming too?

kildaboth1

This is one of the many stone cleitean that are dotted all over the islands. They were used as storage for animals and fodder and by the look of the place I’d say the St Kildians used to roll up the soil and put it inside to stop it blowing away during the winter. Spectacular and lonesome so lonesome in fact that the last inhabitants requested to be taken off in the 1930’s.

kildaup

Here’s another view the little dark smudge in the water if you can see it is our boat. There was bad weather coming in and the anchorage was untenable so all in all after 3 days at sea we only got to spent 2 or 3 hours on St Kilda. So we headed over to Carloway on the isle of Lewis; which is very close to the Callinish stones.

ladskilda

Just look at the heads on these three and they were only away from home four days at this stage can you imagine what they looked like after two weeks. They nearly had to be put into quarantine when they got home. I have photos of the rest of this trip somewhere I’ll post when I find them.

Tús maith, leath na h-oibre

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A good start is half the work. Well let’s hope this old saying or seanfhocail holds true. I thought I might start at the beginning and show you some views of where Roeboats is located. We’re located just off the N71 in the leam a mhádra (dog’s leap) valley overlooking Roaringwater bay and the Fastnet_Rock. I’ve been living in this area for almost ten years and as you can see it’s an easy place to stay in.sunnyhouse1

I moved to West cork to build boats but got a little sidetracked and have been making fine wooden funiture for the last ten years instead. Check out my furniture at Tiernan Roe Fine Woodworking, as you can see I’m a big fan of blogs. However I aim to update this blog a lot more frequently.sunnydrive1

Previous to moving to West Cork I worked in Berlin and Dublin as a special effects model maker making tings like rubber armour and 9metre 35′ statues of liberty for the top of Checkpoint Charlie on the old Berlin wall. Which was very interesting and used a lot of the skills needed in boatbuilding like mold making, fibreglass fabrication and some complex wood work; one project recreated the art nouveau interior of Maxim’s restaurant in Paris.

Roeboats, Ballydehob, Co. Cork, t:+353 (0)28 38973 m: +353 (0)86 158 69 37 e:roeboats@ymail.com

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