Originally from landlocked Yorkshire, Claire Davey's love of the sea stems from an unorthodox upbringing. At the age of five, she was brought to live on a 32ft sailing boat in Cornwall by her "hippy parents".

Now living in Galway, Claire's lifelong bond with the sea has resulted in her working as Course Director with Bow Waves Sail Training.

The years Claire spent living on board a sailing ship, in a boatyard, "a real community, where people built their own boats ", have given her the happiest memories of her life. One particular event she remembers fondly is when a "huge, big boat, like a Greenpeace boat - a big hippy boat, basically", docked near her home in Cornwall. "Anyone who wanted to hop on and join them on the trip, could do so. My father was all into this idea that we'd all leave Cornwall and hop onto this boat, which was called 'Free', and go sailing round the world, but my mother soon put a stop to that with three young children," she says.

"We lived on the boat for three, four years...We sailed around, and I remember things like dolphins and whales - as a child those things are so exciting." However, life in Cornwall was not always so magical, and one of Claire's more vivid memories involves one of the stilts on which the boat balanced during tidal changes collapsing, while her father was away working on a North Sea oil rig.

Moving to Ireland at the age of 16, and moving from Roscommon to Mayo, eventually settling in Galway, it was the late 1990s before Claire began to sail again. "I always wanted to do more sailing again. A friend of mine owned a boat and I used to go out with him quite a lot, in West Cork and Lough Derg." After her friend left Ireland to work with the UN in East Timor, Claire bought his boat, a 21ft wooden 'mousequetaire', built in France. Given her own love of sailing, it's only natural that she hopes her son, Joe, aged seven, will follow in her footsteps.

In 2001, Claire did a Yachtmaster Offshore Theory course in the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. Getting into sailing on a professional level was a new departure, she says, largely related to burn-out from her job as a community worker. "Community work", she says, "is more like a vocation than a profession", and she felt a change was necessary.

Having worked with the Galway Traveller Movement and with various other community and youth groups before joining Bow Waves as their Course Director, Claire is looking forward to the challenge of bringing sailing to a whole new audience by tying it together with her community work. Regarding the public perception of sailing as an elitist sport, Claire is adamant that "sailing can be anything to anyone", and thinks that it is probably less elite in Galway than in other places. Either way, she is determined to combat that in Bow Waves, by targeting "groups who don't get those opportunities" and getting them involved with Bow Waves.

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