Kilmore Quay, Wexford and Courtown
Aiden Bates
September 22, 2023
Kilmore Quay , Wexford and Courtown
It was late September. I had been sailing nearly non stop since April and time was running out to complete my challenge, so sadly I could not meet the chief HM of Wexford County, Captain Phil Murphy. Luckily I was able to hire a car in Dublin, and drive to meet his assistant in Kilmore Quay going via Wexford where I took some photos. Previously we had poked our bow into the entrance to Courtown harbour when sailing north.
KILMORE QUAY. Aiden Bates, HM of Kilmore Quay, together with his wonderfully titled Harbour Constable, Ray Carroll, were there to greet me in their harbour office. Kilmore Quay is only 55 nautical miles from Milford Haven or Fishguard and it is no surprise that it is a popular "first port" for yachts arriving in Ireland - a staggering 700 per year! The entrance is very tricky with a rocky reef called St Patrick's Bridge (see photo of a fishing boat atop the reef).
Aiden fished his family boat in the Irish sea up to 2005, at which point he decommissioned it tempted by a compensation payment by the EU. He became disillusioned with fishing telling me that Ireland has 16% of EU water but only 4% of the quota whereas Belgium has 1% of the water, but in some species, 90% of the quota. Before log books were introduced, Aiden said his boat happily fished white fish and dredged scallops as they were available.
Aiden's maritime career is very typical of many HMs, having also been on the lifeboat crew all his life, becoming Coxswain in 2004. He reminded me that the RNLI is celebrating their 200th anniversary in 2024, but rather gloomily he does not think it will survive for 250 years he explained there is now a lot of red tape restricting how it is run.
WEXFORD is a very different harbour, its name meaning "inlet of the mud flats". With a bar that is only 1.8m deep at high water (Good Dog draws 1.65m!) it does not attract many visitors. This was not always the case, in the 17th and 18th C it was the sixth largest harbour in Ireland. Since then the silt and returned and now only shallow mussel dredgers work within the estuary.
COURTOWN, further up the coast, is tiny but somewhere had promised to take my best man, whose forebears had built the harbour. Despite his encouragement and my best efforts, I was not foolhardy enough to take Good Dog into what must be the shallowest harbour in Ireland. It's history is interesting. The Manor of Courtown was first recorded in 1278 and in 1711 the land passed to a James Stopford, the family later to become The Earl of Courtown, and who during the famine relief work of 1847 improved the harbour with a pier with the successful intention of creating fishing jobs for those who could no longer farm. The fishers have long since gone, but the pier is still there!
It was late September. I had been sailing nearly non stop since April and time was running out to complete my challenge, so sadly I could not meet the chief HM of Wexford County, Captain Phil Murphy. Luckily I was able to hire a car in Dublin, and drive to meet his assistant in Kilmore Quay going via Wexford where I took some photos. Previously we had poked our bow into the entrance to Courtown harbour when sailing north.
KILMORE QUAY. Aiden Bates, HM of Kilmore Quay, together with his wonderfully titled Harbour Constable, Ray Carroll, were there to greet me in their harbour office. Kilmore Quay is only 55 nautical miles from Milford Haven or Fishguard and it is no surprise that it is a popular "first port" for yachts arriving in Ireland - a staggering 700 per year! The entrance is very tricky with a rocky reef called St Patrick's Bridge (see photo of a fishing boat atop the reef).
Aiden fished his family boat in the Irish sea up to 2005, at which point he decommissioned it tempted by a compensation payment by the EU. He became disillusioned with fishing telling me that Ireland has 16% of EU water but only 4% of the quota whereas Belgium has 1% of the water, but in some species, 90% of the quota. Before log books were introduced, Aiden said his boat happily fished white fish and dredged scallops as they were available.
Aiden's maritime career is very typical of many HMs, having also been on the lifeboat crew all his life, becoming Coxswain in 2004. He reminded me that the RNLI is celebrating their 200th anniversary in 2024, but rather gloomily he does not think it will survive for 250 years he explained there is now a lot of red tape restricting how it is run.
WEXFORD is a very different harbour, its name meaning "inlet of the mud flats". With a bar that is only 1.8m deep at high water (Good Dog draws 1.65m!) it does not attract many visitors. This was not always the case, in the 17th and 18th C it was the sixth largest harbour in Ireland. Since then the silt and returned and now only shallow mussel dredgers work within the estuary.
COURTOWN, further up the coast, is tiny but somewhere had promised to take my best man, whose forebears had built the harbour. Despite his encouragement and my best efforts, I was not foolhardy enough to take Good Dog into what must be the shallowest harbour in Ireland. It's history is interesting. The Manor of Courtown was first recorded in 1278 and in 1711 the land passed to a James Stopford, the family later to become The Earl of Courtown, and who during the famine relief work of 1847 improved the harbour with a pier with the successful intention of creating fishing jobs for those who could no longer farm. The fishers have long since gone, but the pier is still there!