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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Next to arguably the most exciting classroom in the world, it's the 70-foot Clipper Yacht, the Spirit of Shackleton, which is now used to teach life lessons and ocean science to its young crew as it travels to some of the most exciting places on Earth. And this weekend, it will embark on the Round Ireland Yacht Race.
Enda O'Quinnan is the skipper and owner of the Business Post Group, but he's here because of the sailing today. He joins me in the studio. Enda, you're very welcome.
Yeah, good morning. It's really exciting.
Chapter 2: What is the Spirit of Shackleton and its purpose?
I was down on the boat at eight o'clock this morning. Nice, soft Irish conditions. But the Round Ireland race is not to be undertaken lightly. It's 704 miles and whatever about the design of Ireland, it's a perfect race mark. And over 50 boats will be heading out from Wicklow tomorrow. They'll be started by the Lough Aranach Samuel Beckett. So it's really quite exciting.
So who'll be on there? Who'll be on the spirit of Shackleton?
Well, it's actually a mixture. It's kind of intergenerational learning. We have some old sea salts, people who are quite experienced, who in fact pay to go. It's the experience of a lifetime. So she's more of a training boat. And then we had a public competition. It was open to anybody in Ireland. That's 18 to 25. Under 18, you know, this is quite a machine.
And we had 39 applicants and we shortlisted 12, all who will go to sail on the boat. And four of those are selected for the crew that starts tomorrow, some of whom have never really sailed before.
Right. I mean, that is quite something to be thrown into this, having never done this.
Yeah, well, we're very safety conscious, you know, and of course, the rules and regulations are quite tight. The boat has sailed around the world three times before. At the top level, we have some really experienced people. But yeah. Yeah. You're in at the deep end. It's going to be a challenge. It's going to be a challenge and I think we're up for it. There's great excitement.
It's the sort of grand national of the sport of sailing, the Round Ireland, excellently run by Wicklow Sailing Club. I was with CiarƔn O'Grady, the race director there yesterday.
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Chapter 3: What challenges does the Round Ireland Yacht Race present?
So there's a good atmosphere. It starts off Wicklow Head at two o'clock tomorrow. And we were too big to fit into Wicklow Harbour. So we're the Royal Irish Yacht Club or the partner club with it. So we'd be leaving from Dun Laoghaire.
Now, the Shackleton is described as a floating classroom. Is that because you're taking these newbies out and showing them the ropes, forgive the pun, or is there more to the learning?
There's a lot more to it than that. You know, the Shackleton story is an extraordinary story. I was always... I was never really looking back at the past. I was always interested in doing things. And some years ago, I pulled into a place called Port Chalmers, South Island, New Zealand, a place called in Ortego Bay. And it was serendipity. It was absolutely...
a week to the hundred years where Shackleton had left from on one of his voyages. So I was invited to the Shackleton Society in Athai. The whole Shackleton story, it's not so much what he did as an explorer and as an adventurer.
Chapter 4: Who can participate on the Spirit of Shackleton?
Shackleton was a role model in leadership. He studied in the Harvard Business School and there's a big revival of interest together with him and Tom Green and many other Irish sailors who were on the the famous Shackleton expeditions. And so what we're doing is we're part of what we call the Grace O'Malley fleet. And there's Pamela Lee, who's an Irish sailor.
She's brought eight other French teams with her. So we're extending that out. So it's really... You know, it's an appetite. Like when I was younger than I am now, I went out on the original Asgard and it introduced me to the ocean. And this is at a different stage now. This is a sort of a modern dynamic racing boat, but it's the same fundamentals.
The Asgard experience, I've heard it described as life changing.
Yes.
What was it like for you?
Well, you know, the Atlantic Youth Trust, which are the charity which I'm involved in, its mission is to connect young people with the ocean and adventure. And it's not, we're not really teaching people to sail. It's really an introductory. There's organisations like Sail Training in Ireland who place people on other boats.
But we really believe that Ireland should have its own sail training flagship. And And one of the challenges is in the maritime is it's fragmented right across.
So we're looking to try and change that in terms of being a conduit, not just introducing young people to the sport of sailing, but there's careers in the maritime in research, the great work of the Marine Institute, harbours, offshore renewables, merchant marine. And a lot of the third level colleges have a lot of great courses in that space.
But it's about more than that, isn't it? I get the impression from you that it is about leadership. It's about finding direction.
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Chapter 5: What safety measures are in place for inexperienced sailors?
Well, we've put together a very ambitious programme. We'll be sailing around Ireland, we'll be going to Cork and then we're going to Scotland for the final leg of the Clipper Round the World Race, the fleeter in Washington DC at the moment. And then beyond that, we hope to... do a training voyage down to the northwest coast of Spain, crew change, south coast of Spain, crew change.
It'll be a great opportunity to go mainly at Reiner Airport. So we're not restricted geographically. We're not prisoners of geography. So from there, we'd go to the Canaries, Ascension Island. across eventually on a long trip to Uruguay. And we've partnered with the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust. So we'll have young people come up from the Falklands.
And then from there, we'll go to Ashaya, just inside Cape Horn, a trip down into the Antarctic. And that'll be December, January this year. And then all going well, we'll go straight to Magellan, up to Chile, Valparaiso.
Chuckie Meg of Valparaiso Mariano, the great poem, and then up to Lima and permit permission, Galapagos, Panama, and then across to the Caribbean, Antigua a week, and then back to Ireland in May, June to continue a series of introductory ocean voyages.
And these are all learning trips. They're all trips where people will be brought on board to figure out...
It's a combination and it's intergenerational. It's not restricted to young people. Adults can go. The model is it's pay and play. Adults can go and they'll pay for their voyage. And then we have the Atlantic Youth Trust, which raises bursaries for those who can't afford to go and also those in between. So it's an interesting model and I think it'll work.
And the spirit of Shackleton resonates really what it's about, which is adventure, exploration and
and having a bit of fun actually Well I hope you do over the weekend and those people who are first time to sailing I hope they enjoy it Enda thanks so much for coming in Thank you very much Endo Quinine there and the spirit of Shackleton doing the Round Ireland Yacht Race this weekend
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