Harbour Master Sailing Challenge March 2019 to September 2023

Cappagh & Kilrush

July 25, 2023
HM 237. "I can come and see you Mark, but I've got a funeral at ten..."

I was lucky to meet Patrick Scanlon the HM of tiny Cappagh. Not only he was about to retire as HM and but he had a funeral to go to to ten o'clock and could not stay long.

Once a busy commercial and embarkation harbour at the lowest part of the River Shannon, Cappagh is now just the pilot station for boats entering the river. Patrick drives the pilot boat, as he has done for the last 37 years, after spending 11 years in the Merchant Navy. It is a skilled job, driving a small boat alongside a large ship travelling at at least 10 knots in order for the pilot to step onto a rope ladder suspended down the side. Only once did a ladder fall off and the pilot fall into the water, in the dark, and that was 28th Feb 1997 - a date firmly embedded on Patrick's mind. He was saved after ten minutes in the freezing water and is still working as a pilot.

Born in nearby Kilrush, Patrick's uncle was also the HM here and his grandfather was a pilot - at 6ft 6 tall and 25 stone a large one! The family lived on the nearby monastic island of Scattery. The last resident left there in 1969 with many of Patrick's relations emigrating to Australia, the US and England. Once he was chatting to a visitor from the US and they found they were 3rd cousins. I suppose that is not surprising when you think that 10 million people born in Ireland emigrated after 1800 and 36 million Americans claim Irish descent.

In grandfather's day, the pilots were taken out in a canvas currach rowing boat and the coxswain earnt five shillings a time. Patrick remembers many of the unusual cargos plied up and down the Shannon - coal from Goole, mahogany and cocoa beans from Africa and most unusually the special wood used to make tomato punnets in Spain. In those days over 1,000 ships visited the 6 to 8 different ports along the river up to Limerick and then onwards inland.

It was now 10.15 and I said to Patrick that I must not hold him up for his funeral. "Oh that's alright" he said, "It goes on all day!"

While visiting Cappagh, we moored the boat in Kilrush Marina which is entered via an automatic set of lock gates - all very efficient. Not only was the marina so friendly, but the adjoining boat yard was full of skilled boatbuilders and I decided I would bring Good Dog back here to over-winter 2024 / 2025. The final photo is the famous stack at Loophead which we sailed past on our way in.

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