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Anything with a west is it.....

13/6/2016

“Anything with a west in it....”, that's what they say on this side of Dundalk Bay - a huge bite out of the northeast coast of Ireland before the mountains of Mourne but an end to the sea's hunger. It's 11miles wide and when the sea empties and when the sun shines you could mistake it for a flat desert coated with a good dose of rain. And there it stays for hours and hours being dried out with the sun and sea breezes until it floods again from both the north and south of the Irish sea. Little is written about it and sailors tend to avoid it, instead cutting across to Carlingford where a comfortable depth of water is always assured. The wooden wreck of a ship sits beside where I'm presently beached, like so many others in the bay they were locally owned and used to draw coal, bricks and grain over and back to Liverpool. Some men are still alive, I am told, that lived and worked out of these wooden crafts now ship wrecked on the shore.

The Newgrange Currach has moved on in leaps and bounds. It is difficult to know now what is left to alter or tweak, perhaps the rudders' shafts could be slimmed or the ballast reduced, the boat is slow but very steady and fun to steer. The winds are to change, they say, next week but don't hold your breath, it has been northeasterly for the best part of 5 weeks now. The worm in my head still slithers and slimes - the rawhide seams could break anytime. But each day I check for weaknesses in each seam and all seems good so far, for as much as I can get to from the outside. It has always been the greatest question in all of this archeological experiment....will the seams holdout????

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B.C. .....

11/6/2016

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A boat of the Nuragic People - Sardinia

“You should have called it B.C.”, he said after wading through the water to climb up onto the boat. The boat represents ‘Before Christ’ and also the first letters of the Boyne Currach from which the method of its construction was originally contrived. John could have had a lot more to say when he arrived down to the beach only to find we had returned too late to reach sand or mud and instead we left the boat was sitting in a maze of stones. If I was to make another boat, I would spend every spare minute devising new lighter skids, as without them a skin boat would only last a week. Now granted the ones presently being used are strong and take the abuse dished out by the 5 ½ tonnes resting above them and of course it goes without saying no metal is used to brace them to the craft’s undercarriage but we can’t help thinking that a little more finesse could have upped the speed and lowered drag. Each skid has three 30ft alder trees braided together with leather which replicate the craft’s curves from beneath, making them very strong and hard wearing, but the Stone Age were sleeker and were naturally more aware of what rawhide or leather could do.
The early Gauchos who, with their skills in rawhide braiding, made horse bridles and saddlery an art form, were standing on the shoulder of their Spanish invaders who in turn had been groomed by the Moors who brought this highly skilled craft from the Sahara. I can’t help thinking anymore that we also snuck in behind the Neanderthals to only improve on what they had begun 100,000 years before us, when tripping over the Mediterranean to far off islands where they dined out on pigmy hippos and there are indications that leather or skin boats had continued to be used on the Mediterranean for much longer than we think. Hazel grew plentifully as in Ireland and with so many similarities between our currachs and their early crafts of both on land and sea, it’s impossible not to want to be lured into the unanswered questions surrounding the builders of the great brochs of the islands to our north and those dotted throughout Sardinia. Were these the culture of people we call the ‘Fir Bolg’ - raiders and pirates from the sea, a lingering civilisation from the late Bronze Age that just wouldn’t go away? I’d imagine the people who built Newgrange had the same tenacity, unwilling to change from a way of life that had seen them succeed and prosper for at least 2,000 years. The present civilisation occupying the fertile plains and glens of Europe continue to harvest what they had sewn 5,000 years ago, organised religion and hosting from the domesticated animals they had chosen. But they say everything changes in, give or take, 2 millenniums, so who knows, perhaps the forests of Europe may find favour once again over our present form of food production and the new mind set of veganism, being accepted now so openly in the holy lands, will perhaps give a new impetus to finding where human evolution has us going. We are but wishful gold fish, seeking to find other ways round the same old bowl.....

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If the wind will not serve.....

8/6/2016

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As the ancient Latin proverb says - "If the wind will not serve....take to the oars!"
And so with winds abating for a while, light airs allow us to resort back to the oars and work continues....
One of our rowing sea currachs sits patiently to one side and when tides allow, we take her out for a row - while Bovinda's oars sit, at the ready!

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Anything with a west is it.....

B.C. .....

If the wind will not serve.....

Claidhbh Ó Gibne

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