Having grown up "less than 15ft" from the Shannon in Athlone, John Leech has loved the water all his life, so it's no surprise that he has ended up at the head of one of the country's most important marine-related organisations.

John is the Chairman of Irish Water Safety, the statutory organisation that educates and informs the public on water safety.

Like many a small boy, he dreamed of running away with the Navy. Unlike plenty of others, John actually went through with it, and joined what he, half seriously, calls the "the best little Navy in the world" as soon as he finished school.

John joined the Navy in 1979, and says it was a great time to get involved as "people were just beginning to take the Navy seriously. It was an interesting time to see it develop". His skill as a diver led to him heading up the naval diving unit, and by the end of his naval career he had commanded both the LE Aisling and the LE Orla. Due to the IRA threat, security was a major issue for the Navy at the time, and he took part in some missions involving bombed out ships.

Although he is still a member of the Naval Reserve (and has just returned from a four-week working holiday to the Great Lakes in America, where he relieved a Naval officer on a Presidential visit to the area) the time John spends at sea these days is mostly leisure. "I'm a passionate sailor - when I was in the Navy, I would come in from sea on a grey boat, step off and step straight onto another one to go sailing."

Since John left the Navy, he says the "marine leisure industry in Ireland has seen a nuclear explosion". John is adamant that Galway needs a marina, and fast. "If Galway was to get a marina for 500 yachts, it'd be full before it was built," he predicts.

John partly attributes the new interest in all things maritime to the constraints presented by modern life. "Since I've come ashore, there's a nanny state. People work in a little corridor and they don't look outside it. We're all working so hard, we going home and we fall asleep in front of the TV. We're all living these crazy lives, and they're so boring." He believes that people are turning to boats, and the sea, to indulge a sense of adventure.

Having competed in the Whitbread Series (now the famous Volvo Ocean Race), sailed among icebergs on the wooden Asgard, and dived around the ruins of bombed-out boats, John can truly say he has "lived on the edge", an ideal qualification for his current job.

His passion for sailing is equalled by his passion for the work carried out by IWS. "As a naval diver I helped to recover dozens upon dozens of bodies from the water, accidents, suicides and parasuicides. Almost all of these were preventable," he says. "The vast majority of drownings are preventable, and we have got to keep working on it. We've been working with the Samaritans for four years, and we believe it has helped."

The main sources of IWS funding are local authorities and private donations. They have recently appointed an education officer thanks to a Spanish charity, and their PAWS (Primary Aquatics Water Safety) scheme has just begun, teaching young children the principles of lifesaving at a young age.

Despite the funding constraints experienced by many such organisations, John says he believes IWS is making a difference. "There used to be up to 220 drownings annually, now there are 131. That's big progress, especially with the increase of people on the water."

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