Kilmacsimon Rowing Club crews take on Ocean to City challenge

The mass gatherings around the Cork Harbour Festival may have had to be cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but that didn’t stop coastal rowers from still taking on the festival’s flagship event, the Ocean To City rowing race.

The festival promised events on water, on land and at home on our screens, with 15 events online and 28 activities planned around the city and harbour.

It celebrated Cork’s connection with the water, the river and its harbour, and encourages everyone to go explore the wonderful water facilities in our city. It’s only when you don’t live within a short drive of water that you begin to fully appreciate how lucky we are, and how easily we can partake of water sports.

The festival’s Ocean To City race went virtual, allowing spectators to follow participants around the world as they took on the Ocean To City #fivemilesfromhome challenge.

And with a Covid-hit regatta season coastal rowers were only too eager to take up the challenge, in a safe manner.

Among those were members of Kilmacsimon Rowing Club, who took part in the Cork Harbour Festival Ocean To City race. They were joined by clubs from all over Ireland and also in 19 other countries who rowed five miles (eight kilometres) from their own club or nearby.

Kilmacsimon RC put out three crews, made up of Ailish Calnan, Mary Calnan, Anne Bradfield, Anna Fehily, Karen Nixon, Jean Humphreys, Catherine and Kieran Curtin, Timmy O’Riordan, Martin McCarthy, Seamus Murphy, Padraig McCarthy and Declan O’Sullivan, and mixed the teams up, along with coxes John Scannell, Helen O’Brien and CJ McDonagh, and watched by Kevin O’Connor in the safety boat.

And in the sunshine they rowed their distance across both the Saturday and Sunday of the June Bank Holiday weekend, from Kinsale to Kilmacsimon and back again to Kinsale. And enjoyed a “fantastic day out”.

They will take up the oars again very soon to take part in the July Welsh leg of Ocean To City, which will be held on the weekend of July 9-11 (there was also a Scottish leg of the race back in May).

Among those taking part in the June event was Kilmacsimon Rowing Club’s Ailish Calnan, a survivor of breast cancer, who has undertaken to row 100km in 30 days across the month of June for Breast Cancer Ireland.

As it stands Ailish has hit the 40km mark and is doing it all on the water, no indoor rowing machines here!

Kilmacsimon Rowing Club members said they are “delighted to be rowing along with Ailish in support”.

And we’d all like to row in behind that great cause, and can do so by visiting www.justgiving.com and doing a search for ‘Ailish Calnan 100km in 30 days’, and giving what you can.