Greystones Teens Return After 4-Week Atlantic Trip

Here she blows

ou know how it is, you’re off on the holiday of a lifetime, and when you finally come back to the real world, well, it just doesn’t seem quite the same.

What was once very, very familiar now seems unreal – and ever-so-slightly surreal.

For Greystones twins Conor and Jack Galligan, returning after four weeks sailing across the Atlantic on the the old wooden ship SV Tenacious, the stark reality of Ireland’s Covid-19 restrictions was something of a shock to the suntanned system.

“When were got on Tenacious at the start,” says 16-year-old Conor, “nobody was stressing Covid-19 too much. Nobody on board had it, so life aboard the ship was pretty normal really for the duration of the voyage. We didn’t really hear much about what was happening worldwide…”

And then the Jubilee Sailing Training ship docked in Cobh, Co Cork, and the stress back on dry land was plain to see.

Talking to The Irish Times, Conor continued, “It was a bit weird, seeing all these people wearing masks when they delivered food to the ship. Ireland is a bit weird too, with everyone doing the social distancing, but I thought it would be worse, more like a ghost town.”

Conor and Jack’s parents, Robert and Caroline, were waiting for them on Kennedy Quay in Cobh when they docked. The twins had left Antigua in the Caribbean – along with six other teenagers, all transition year students from Dublin, Cork and Wicklow – aboard the SV Tenacious on March 11th, and their parents were clearly glad to see them home.

“The Jubilee Sailing Trust have been amazing when we asked if they could bring the kids back here,” says Caroline, “because it would have been a nightmare to get them back from the UK amid the current lockdown.

“We are so grateful to them for diverting to Cork, and the Port of Cork, who organised a pilot boat to collect them. Thanks to them, they avoided having to go to the UK, and they are getting off the boat, healthy and safe.”

Also on board were fellow Greystonians Charlie Kavanagh and Robbie Byrne, the latter’s wife, Sarah, stating, “I know they had some choppy weather since leaving the Azores – it was pretty windy with pretty lumpy seas – but in terms of the coronavirus, they were in the safest place on the planet, cocooned out in the middle of the Atlantic.”

Darn tootin’. The ship’s Captain Caterson finished by stating that being out in the middle of that great big sea for the past four weeks “was definitely a good place to be given what’s happening in the world…”