Adventurer to her core, Aileen’s business is on crest of a wave

AILEEN Mann was born for the outdoors. At the age of four, her dad asked if she wanted to go horse riding and she said yes, quickly becoming obsessed.

She worked at the horse riding school in exchange for her riding lessons and would sometimes even dash out of school at lunch time to go horse riding.

“The adults would go mad when they realised the kinds of jumps I was doing - I was absolutely fearless!” Aileen recalls.

She had an entire cross country course to herself at times and would take on the most challenging jumps she could find!

Classroom life was never a place of comfort for Aileen. When there was a career guidance day in secondary school and they were handing out prospectuses, the teachers ignored her, knowing full well she had no interest in college.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but it was definitely going to be something outdoors - college wasn’t even a consideration,” she says.

Until...

“I noticed a climber on the cover of a prospectus and I instinctively reached for it and started thumbing through the pages, thinking, where is this climber? Then I found a course in Dublin - Outdoor Adventure Management!”

Her mind changed entirely and she applied for the course and got it!

Not only did she now want to study, but Aileen also chose the Dublin-based course because of the longer three-year timeline and the added qualifications involved.

The course consisted of two days in the classroom with theory-based modules such as statistics and mountain orienteering. And then three days in the field, which consisted of everything from speed boat racing to mountain biking.

On the morning I met Aileen at her Atlantic Offshore Adventures headquarters on Garrettstown Beach, she showed me the bus that she had bought the previous year. It’s a storage unit, an office space, and a classroom!

Aileen teaches young people from the area all things water sports and safety. She can accommodate a class of six students, fully equipped with a projector and PowerPoint slides.

She does surfing, stand-up paddleboarding, kayaking, summer camps, lifeguard training, and adventure certifications.

From feeling completely disinterested with the classroom to building her own beachside classroom and teaching her own subjects - she’s a testament to what people can do when they apply themselves to their passions.

Aileen has been based in the area since 2006 and only lives a short distance up the road from her bus. She’s carved out a dream life for herself, with her commute to work less than 60 seconds.

She founded Atlantic Offshore Adventures from scratch in 2015. In 2017, she bought Kinsale Surf Adventures. In June, 2018, she noticed an advert for Garrettstown Surf School, which was founded in 2004 and was the first surf school in the area, and she thought: ‘That’s strange, for them to be selling everything off in June, which is just when the busy season kicks in!’

She bought it and consolidated the three businesses into one. However, a few slow seasons pitched her fledgling business into jeopardy and in 2019 she was seriously considering closure,

“I just couldn’t see how it could be sustained. I was honestly right on the edge of closing for good. I was considering an office job or a factory job or anything - it was that bad.”

And then Covid hit… and like the rest of us, Aileen didn’t know what to expect.

But when the lockdown restrictions were slowly being lifted and people were out and about again, things began to change,

“I said one day I’d post up here and at the Dock and see what happens. Quickly, two staff turned into four staff and it continued to grow.

“Before Covid, I had nine staff on board. After Covid, I had 22 staff on board. It was a total game-changer!”

Aileen took a moment to help a lady who was asking about the safety of the water, and she pointed out the safer spots, including the V-shaped rips in the undulating waves.

Aileen says of her staff: “I take them on until they’re J1 age, and then when they go abroad they don’t have to work in bars or restaurants - they can be surf instructors!”

Aileen trains and certifies her employees, hosts surf camps for kids, and brings a plethora of outdoor activities to the area.

She’s clearly a positive influence in her community and she can be found on Garrettstown all summer long!