16th December 2020
Summer evening sunshine greets the Galway Bay Sailing Club fleet as they welcome home the Transatlantic-voyaging ketch Danu (at centre) at Kilronan in the Aran Islands at the end of July 2020
Credit: Vera Quinlan
Galway Bay Sailing Club, comfortably ensconced in their fine clubhouse at Renville New Harbour near Oranmore at the head of Galway Bay, can look back at many ups and downs during the fifty years of sailing development they ve experienced from small beginnings in the city in 1970, until now they re one of the pre-eminent clubs on the West Coast in all areas of sailing.
Yet even the most sadistic theatrical director would scarcely have green-lighted a storyline in which – just as the final details for a year s long Golden Jubilee celebration in 2020 were being put into place by Commodore John Shorten and his committee – the Black Beast from the East, otherwise the Pandemic, crept into place to dominate everyone s lives and blast lovingly-crafted pro