Cork Coasts: The work of the sea continues on Leeside

THE Cork Harbour Festival, which ran this year for the first 10 days of June, is one of the city and county’s best-loved annual events, and each year it is co-ordinated by Meitheal Mara, Cork’s community boatyard and nationally accredited training centre.

Translated from the Irish as “The Work of the Sea”, Meitheal Mara has been running for over three decades, and in that time social inclusion has played a defining role in the work it does. Founded in 1993, the boatyard is located in Crosses Green, in the heart of the city, and it is dedicated to fostering and promoting maritime culture and seamanship through traditional currach and wooden boat building skills.

In particular, the registered charity provides training and development to those who are sometimes at risk of social exclusion, those who are recovering from addiction, and those living with disabilities. So far, Meitheal Mara has welcomed 45 adults who have a disability and three people who are, by their own description, former substance misusers.

In recent times more than 350 people in 26 groups from 23 organisations have enjoyed Meitheal Mara’s boat building and rowing programmes; 500 participants have taken part in the Ocean to City; and Cork Harbour Festival has attracted somewhere in the region of 13,200 spectators.

Donagh MacArtain, long-time board member of Meitheal Mara, tells The Echo that the boatyard has a number of functions, all of them focused on its work within the community.

“It has a workshop, through which we bring men and women who are distanced from the labour market, and we give them training in wood skills and boat building. We do repairs and we build boats in the workshop.

“We also have a youth programme, part boat building and part on the water, through our Bádóireacht programme, which is something designed for all of the youth clubs in the city, and we also run a programme for transition year students from the pontoon at Lapp’s Quay,” Mr MacArtain says.

The Bádóireacht programme is a boat building and rowing service for young people aged from 12 to 25, giving them an opportunity to learn to row currachs, sail and to build their own boats and woodcraft. It has been running since 2002, with an average of 130 young people participating each year.

A total of 26 Ukrainian young people has so far taken part in summer and autumn rowing programmes, while six young people who were living in direct provision accommodation have continued rowing with Bádóireacht, some with them since 2017.

Claire Hayden, Bádóireacht manager at Meitheal Mara, says most of her work is on the water, working with young people who might otherwise not have access to maritime pursuits.

“We have some groups who have been working with us all through the winter, and some groups who have just started during the spring, we’ve had really tough weather this year with lots of rain and wind, but it’s a testament to the young people that they’re rowing in the Ocean to City race on Saturday, June 8, rowing the 4km course from Blackrock Castle to Lapp’s Quay, and their boats come in just ahead of the main race,” Ms Hayden says.

Ocean to City, or An Rás Mór, is a long-distance rowing race which attracts hundreds of participants annually, with four course distances, the 28km ocean course, the 22km city course, the 13km Monkstown course and the 4km youth course, all finishing in the city centre.

Since it began in 2005, it has grown from a race for traditional fixed-seat boats into an all-inclusive rowing and paddling event, embracing everything from traditional wooden working boats, currachs, skiffs, gigs and longboats to contemporary ocean racing shells, kayaks, canoes, and even stand-up paddle boards.

Ocean to City is the centrepiece of the Cork Harbour Festival, the largest annual event in Cork harbour, which offers a week-long celebration of Ireland’s maritime culture, featuring over 80 different events, with over 50 event partners across Cork city and county.

Founded in 2015, the festival is run from Meitheal Mara’s events office and celebrates the harbour as a natural and cultural resource. Director of Ocean to City, Donagh MacArtain says that many of the participants in Ocean to City have close ties with the boatyard, and coastal rowing for adults is an important part of what the charity does.

“Our sister club, Naomhóga Chorcaí, which is the rowing arm of what we do, go on rowing trips, and they’ve just come back from northern Spain, we’ve been to the Vogalonga in Venice, we’ve been to the Great River Race in London,” he says.

The future is “pretty good” for Meitheal Mara, Mr MacArtain says, but he adds that the community and voluntary sector has been under pressure since the crash of 2007, with funding levels only being restored slowly.

“It is a slow process. We have been able to put together, through various programmes, a decent core management team that then supports how we operate the community employment programme, the community services programme, and they’re government-sponsored programmes.” He adds that Meitheal Mara is currently working with a number of water-based organisations that are either without premises or without access to the water to secure a purpose-built, or purpose-adapted, premises with adjoining slipway on a site downstream of the city’s bridges.

Among those groups are Naomhóga Chorcaí, Blackrock Rowing Club, Cork Dragons, Cork Sea Angling, Cork Missing Persons Search & Recovery, and Sailing into Wellness.

Together, the groups are advocating for a Cork Maritime Hub as a multi-use centre for Cork city and harbour.

Mr MacArtain says Meitheal Mara is very grateful for the support of Cork City Council and the Port of Cork, “and multiple agencies”, and pleased that a potential site is currently under consideration, and a feasibility study is underway for a site and a public slipway.

Meitheal Mara describes itself as Cork’s community boatyard, and for Pat MacArtain, the “community” part of that is as important as the “boatyard” part, and the charity and training centre’s ties to the city and county are essential to its work.

“In every part of the harbour, the pontoon on Lapp’s Quay, the Port of Cork pontoon, the Clarion Hotel, Doyle Shipping Group, we have partnerships right throughout the city to facilitate bringing Cork people out to the water and you’ll have a raft-load of international crews here for the festival. We provide work and training for young people and adults through to retirement, and sometimes beyond,” he says.

“In everything that we do, our approach is inclusive and based on mutual respect.”