|
Being a native of Kilkenny, PJ did not grow up around boats or sailing. In fact, he only came to sailing a year after finishing college. "So I was what? 23? Something like that. Summer was coming up and a friend of mine suggested having a go at sailing."
"It's never too late to start sailing," says PJ, whose first taste of sailing came in the form of a Glenans course on Bere Island off the coast of County Cork.
"That Glenans base is gone now but a lot of people remember it very fondly. It was very basic, rusty old bunk beds and no TV. But the craic was incredible. You'd sail all day and at night you made your own fun... Pints, guitars, terrible jokes, worse singing."
From those beginnings PJ began to spend weekends in Baltimore and Westport. Eventually realising Dublin was not where he wanted to be, he moved to Galway to work for "good old Digital" and found it a "fabulous place to work".
"I was only in Galway about three months when, one day, I was driving around the docks and spotted this Tall Ship. I was totally amazed. It was a fabulous boat, all wooden masts and yardarms. I just had to stop and see it. I ended up joining the Pride of Galway support group, and spent an idyllic summer working on the restoration of the Pride and basically living in the docks.
One of the people behind that project was John Killeen (now involved in Galway's Volvo Ocean Race stopover), who invited PJ to crew on his yacht, Mayhem.
"So that introduced me to the world of racing, and it brought me out to GBSC. That was when I really started to regard Galway as home."
PJ went on to sail out of GBSC for a couple of years before his career took him abroad to work in "a range of countries". In 2002 he took some time out to get professional sailing qualifications at the UK Sailing Academy in Cowes.
Having eventually returned to his job as an IT consultant, PJ still sails in his spare time, and his need to constantly have a project on the go has lead to GBSC running its own version of a 'Sailability' programme.
"I hadn't thought about teaching anyone sailing until I got Gary Allen's call saying 'I'm in a wheelchair, can you help me to sail?'" laughs PJ. "Well, you're not going to say no to a question like that are you?"
Over the following year, with strong support from GBSC committee and members, the disabled sailing effort saw Gary get his ISA Level 1 cert and a brand new Challenger boat arrive at the club.
"Yeah, we've had a good start. This year we're hoping to open it up, get more people sailing and volunteering."
To kick off this years' disabled sailing season GBSC is running a 'Come and Try It' day on Sunday 4 May. Potential sailors are asked to register their interest with Alison Ryan of the Irish Disabled Sailing Association on 087-4198796 or
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
, as places are limited.
Comments () » |
 |
 |
Sections 
