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"Would you like to race in a regatta?" Captain Joesie Connelly asked my husband Steve and me and the other five guests on the Famaire, a 42-foot Galway Hooker. We had all just come aboard this handsome old-fashioned craft, a reproduction of a working boat from an earlier era. Its heavy black 'beerbarrel' bottom and rust-colored sails stood out against the gray limestone coast of Connemara. The only other time we had seen one was in an ad for Aer Lingus.

The following day we were to sail about thirty miles off the coast over to the Aran Islands, destinations beautiful in themselves, and perfect for a sail charter. We pondered Joesie’s question, looking at each other and then overhead at the big cotton sails flapping in the breeze.

We were a motley crew. Four of the seven guests were action-seeking Germans, who while their English was strong, had combined sailing experience of less than a day. My husband has been sailing and racing for years; I classify myself as a Sunday sailor. Our seventh crewmember was an American woman with a kit full of seasick remedies and no sailing experience whatever.

Our opponents, the Irish team members on the other three Hookers, were born alongside the sea and have raced competitively for years. They knew every inch of the irregular rocky shoreline, not to mention every centimeter of their gaff-rigged seventeen-ton boats, which are driven by equal parts windpower and crew muscle.

Did the opposition scare us? Hell, no. We were on holiday, and the captain had faith in us, although he would soon discover he had no right. Still, he quietly commanded us through our paces for the next twelve hours. His own seamanship, plus Steve’s and Eileen’s (the cook/first mate) more than made up for the rest of us laggards. Our goal was not to win, we found out as we got into this unique race, but to stay ahead of Bailey, Captain’s mortal enemy. It became our battle cry and created a team out of us.

"Every week we get to work out the grudges," Captain said with a twinkle in his eye. The prior Sunday, in a move that grievously irked him, Bailey had prevented him from participating in a race, "on an illegal illegality". Irish races are a lot like their music ‘seisuns’. To an outsider, they both appear casual and full of happenstance, with formality taking a backseat to style. Yet, the unwritten, unspoken, rules have been in place for centuries.

Our race began at a dead start. At the sound of a shotgun, we hoisted anchor and sails. We were given a six-minute handicap for the fact that our boat was rigged for cruising, not racing. The stripped-out interiors of our three competitors’ boats were in sharp contrast to ours: cramped belowdecks were cooking and food supplies, ten bunks, a week’s worth of clothing, including foul weather gear, and tightly stowed duffels and suitcases.

It seems that in Hooker racing the route is determined by whoever is leading. Our course was twice around McDhara’s Island, then around a second unnamed island, and back to the little town of Roundstone, Famaire’s homeport.

Gusty winds, and, at times, five-foot seas, made for very fast, bouncy sailing. We moved in close enough to the islands’ shore to see nests of gull-like birds tucked between craggy patches of limestone. These protective kittewakes and guillemottes dive-bombed us to warn us away from their young.

We began to learn the ropes, tacking to windward. For several hours under Captain’s capable command, we had the satisfaction of staying ahead of Bailey. Our thirty-something German friends picked up the words for our sails: staysail, mainsail, jib; the lines that control them, sheets and halyards; and the actual maneuvers: tack, jibe, and rounding the mark.

What athletic Andreas lacked in fine-tuned sailing skills, he more than made up in strength, earning the moniker "Mr. Jib" even before he was certain what sail this was. Angelika and Hilda learned to lean against the big wooden tiller, and Karen discovered that the solid well-balanced Famaire gave no cause for seasickness.

We all found that sometimes just staying out of the way was the correct move, as fifteen hundred square feet of billowing sails bowled us along. We chanted our racing mantra with gusto. "I don’t care if I win. I just want to beat Bailey."

Late in the day, at one of the final race markers, the experience and strength of Bailey’s crew told, and in a devastating move, they turned inside of us at one of the marks, and were soon "gone with the wind." We were crushed. The non-sailors among us began to understand the addictiveness of the sport.

That evening over a lobster dinner at eleven PM at O’Dowd’s, one of the many fish restaurants in Roundstone, we replayed our moves like a bunch of Dennis Connor wannabes. "Hindsight is 20 – 20," said Captain, smiling benevolently.

"Here’s a grand toast to Eileen, who made a spectacular recovery!" Andreas shouted. We had all watched her before the race as she rowed our dinghy ashore. Shedding the boat in a cove, so that the extra weight wouldn’t slow us down , she then swam three hundred yards back, dried off, changed her clothes and nonchalantly made our lunch.

Then, at the race’s end at nine o’clock at night, back near where we had started from, it was time to retrieve our dinghy. With the water temperature at 50 degrees, the air about 60, the wind still blowing and the sun about to set, our teeth chattered while watching Eileen swim ashore. As she was rowing back, one of us noticed that Famaire’s anchor had begun to drag. Eileen’s wetsuit was small consolation as she saw us drift further and further away from her. The sun was touching the horizon. Our sails were fluttering madly as Captain kept us from dashing against the rocky shoreline. Finally, headed in the right direction, we scooped down and picked up Eileen, by now puzzled and shivering.

"The more I rowed, the farther away you got," she said over dessert. "I thought, that’s it. It’s almost dark and I’m a goner. I’ll die without beating Bailey."

As we prepared to leave Roundstone the following morning, Captain and Eileen shopped in the village, picking up milk, eggs, meat and other perishables for our meals on board. We guests wandered up along the main street searching for an inn that would allow us to use their washing-up facilities. Although Famaire’s brochure lists a shower, it wasn’t operative during our week aboard. What’s more, shower facilities in the islands we were to visit were few. Those of us who didn’t want to bathe in the brisk Atlantic Ocean soon learned to adjust our hygiene standards. At the end of the road fronting the harbor, a kindly landlady gave us towels and soap so that we could shower in recently vacated rooms of her B & B. Clean and fresh, we were now ready to start voyaging.

With the prevailing winds, we headed southwest, to the Aran Islands. Both geologically and culturally, these three islands hold visitors from around the world enthralled. Nearly bereft of vegetation, the three are giant tilted "plates" of limestone. The harshness of the living conditions have created a unique mindset, some say more Irish than Ireland. Seeing the three islands from the sea, they appear alike: ancient barren treeless outcrops, looking, as the Roundstone landlady said, like the "wrong side of a carpet". Upclose we had the fun of discovering the quirky features of the individual islands.

In his book, The Stones of Aran, Tim Robinson describes the intricate processes at work in creating arable land. Geologically, layers of hard limestone alternate with softer layers of shale. Then, over the last four or five centuries, the sturdy inhabitants have worked to alter the hard surface. The entire population, every man, woman and child, has removed millions and millions of rocks from their fields. Then, they have gone down to the shore and harvested tons of seaweed. One osier (woven basket) at a time, they hauled it to the fields, so that eventually they have a layer of mulch on which to grow potatoes. They also have miles and miles of stone walls. So rich has the land become that farmers on the Connemara mainland transport their cows, sheep and horses to Aran for winter pasturing.

Until the 1970’s Aran’s hardy frontier people lived without electricity or telephones. Today as many as 2000 tourists descend daily in summer to discover the ancient forts, churches and graveyards. The entire effect is not without its ironies, as t-shirted Nike-shod tourists hop into jaunting carts and talk to the local people, who have known quite a Spartan life. Kind of Irish Amish, as it were!

Arriving at the largest of the islands, Inishmore, our red sails billowing about the black wooden ‘tumblehome’ bottom, we were amazed to be caught up in what can only be described as a "movie-star rush". From streets above the pier, the villagers saw our approach and ran down to the docks to haul up our lines. Even the jaunting cart and hotel mini-van drivers, waiting for the ferry, wanted to get involved. The fact that our captain looks like a movie-ordered version of an 'old salt' only added to the atmosphere.

To the old-timers, we were more than "just a pretty face." For hundreds of years, Aran Islanders have looked out from their simple whitewashed thatched roof houses waiting for the arrival of a Hooker. From mainland towns of Galway, Rossaveal and Kinvarra these cutters have been used as pilot, fishing and cargo vessels up and down the west coast. The islands relied on the Hookers especially for delivery of turf, the only source of heat in the olden days.

Then in the early 1970’s, almost overnight, the islands’ reliance on turf and the Hookers came to an end. The Hookers became redundant for haulage, as the Irish put it. In a short story, The Greedy Boatman, an Aran author wrote that two words signaled the end: Calor Gas.

Of the three islands, Inishmaan, six miles square, is my favorite. Infrequent boat service from the mainland makes it the least touristed. We landed there at its "new" pier, to find that it was far from done, and already looked old. Since tides can be as high as 20 – 25 feet, the piers themselves must be very high. Climbing off a boat at low tide onto the pier becomes an act of faith. Hand over hand I grasped the cold slightly slimy metal bars embedded in the oyster-shell rough sidewall, shuddering at the thought of having to do this on a squally evening. (Or after a few pints of Guinness.)

Inishmaan has few pubs, fewer places to stay. Walking through narrow high walled lanes, I felt like the last person on earth. From time to time I caught sight of sheep, shirts flapping clotheslines, carefully tended gardens of fruits and vegetables. I could feel but not see the occasional pair of eyes peering out throughout lace curtains. Fewer than 200 people live here.

My privacy was disturbed briefly when a group of about forty teenagers wearing backpacks passed me on the lane. Led by their teacher, they were on a field trip. Every summer these kids come here to speak and study Gaelic, visiting one of the last outposts of this language. Their instructors keep them on the move, from island to island, as part of their cultural studies program. They stopped at a tiny shop for cold drinks and ice cream before going up to the top of the island to visit Dun Conchair, a seventh-century fort.

I rambled along lanes in the opposite direction, looking for the Inishmaan that John Millington Synge sought when he came at the turn of the century. Yeats, whom he met in Paris, said, "If you want to learn how to write, learn Irish, study the simple folk of the Arans and write plays about them."

Synge spent four summers here and went on to fulfill his writing promise, publishing several plays, including Riders to the Sea and The Playboy of the Western World. Facing St. Gregory’s Sound, on the western side of the island, is a rock formation called Synge’s Chair, said to be his favorite place to think.

As we sailed our boat from island to island, we fell into an easy routine. We expected the weather to be changeable at times, yet in mid-July we enjoyed high sunshine and relatively calm seas. In port, we explored coastal moors, long beaches and wonderful ancient pre-Celtic sites. We went into Irish-speaking ‘Gaeltacht’ villages, and of course at night we ‘gargled’ a few in the pubs.

As captain, Joesie co-ordinated our Irish studies, our nature work, our sailing lore. Because he knew every cove, every ledge along the coast, we were able at times to sail Famaire remarkably close to land. Looking up at the overhanging cliffs, we could see where island ‘Birdmen’, in leaner times, used to lower themselves from the cliffs to catch birds and scoop their eggs from the nearly hidden nests.

Belowdecks, every morning Eileen made up fresh scones and personally tailored our breakfast fry. From the miniscule galley without taking a step, she would pass a plate of sausage, eggs, tomatoes and beans to each of us.

Even though limited space, lack of privacy and no shower contributed to a "last week of finals" atmosphere, it was a remarkable voyage. Abovedecks, we had clean coastal air, long sweeps between islands, feathery clouds and pink and purple sunsets and a ride that was spacious and freeing. Moreover, the good craftsmanship of an old-style boat and an excellent captain and mate left us with the feeling that we had found pure Irish sailing.

Available for crewed charter only, Famaire sails out of the tiny Connemara port of Leiter Ard between April and October, weather permitting. Accommodations are dormitory style, and the shower should be shipshape by now.

Staff can arrange to meet sailors in Galway City for the hour and a half drive to cruising base. Voyages begin on Saturday and end on Friday.

In Europe, call owner Micheal O’Cionna 01353 95 33546. Fax 01353 9533457
In US, contact Le Boat, Inc., 800 992.0291 Email debbie@leboat.com

Photographs by Marguerite Jordan

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