A New Life: Elizabeth Barrett has traded her office for the sea and has never been happier. Lorna Siggins reports
She grew up with the sea on her doorstep, and yet Elizabeth Barrett had no idea that she could have earned a living on it until relatively recently.
That's one of the reasons why the marketing executive was already well established when she embarked on a major career change last year.
The change couldn't have been more of a contrast - signing up with the Naval Service down south in Cork harbour. And now her working life is very different - exchanging a suit for a uniform, a city centre office for a ship's bridge, and nine-to-five hours for a watch system on two-week sea patrols.
Born and reared in Skerries, Co Dublin, Barrett doesn't ever remember the Naval Service being mentioned as an option during career guidance. She was an active member of Skerries Sailing Club, and did stage one of the Irish Sailing Association training, but somehow the Navy never came up during yacht club chat.
She took a primary degree in economics at University College, Dublin (UCD) and then enlisted in a graduate diploma in business studies in 2001, which she completed at the Dublin Business School in Aungier Street the following year.
Barrett was fairly convinced that she was following her star at this stage. "I had my eye on marketing from early on in school, and took economics and business studies for my Junior Cert," she explains.
During her years as a UCD student, she worked part-time with Aer Rianta at Dublin Airport in the perfumery department. She was sent on marketing courses as part of that placement.
"Basically, learning to disguise things to make them what the customer wanted!"
The first slight shift in her career path occurred in the summer of 2000, when she went to the US and was hired as a lifeguard in a summer camp. Camp Counsellors, the US employer, subsequently offered her a job in Dublin, recruiting staff and promoting employment opportunities.
After graduation from UCD, she was taken on as a cashier for the punt/euro changeover with EBS in Westmoreland Street, Dublin, and then began her studies in the Dublin Business School.
She wasn't out of college long when she was taken on by Contract Selling Services in Bridge Street, Dublin, and was appointed accounts executive.
Now she was a fully fledged employee, studies were behind her and she had her evenings to herself. She found herself out one Tuesday evening in September 2001 at Cathal Brugha Barracks in Rathmines, enlisting for the Naval Reserve - then known as Slua Muirí.
As part of the voluntary training, she was sent to the Naval base at Haulbowline, Cork harbour, to learn firefighting and weapons training, among other duties. She loved it - and she realised that women were very much part of the Defence Force wing and had been taken on as cadets since 1996.
In January 2002, she applied for a cadetship and was accepted the following August.
Part of the application procedure involved a physical test - a one-and-a-half mile run, 20 push ups and 20 sit ups. Standard qualifying time was 11 minutes 30 second for men and 13 minutes for women. She completed hers in 10 minutes and 24 seconds.
The medical was "rigorous", she recalls, and there was also a final interview.
When she learned that she was successful, she was thrilled, gave her employers a month's notice, and within weeks she was training with fellow Army, Air Corps and Naval Service cadets on the Curragh.
It was Easter of last year when she went to sea as part of the crew of the LE Aoife. Was she seasick? "Everyone is at some point, I guess, but you develop your sea legs," she says.
She found the two-week patrols, mainly on fisheries monitoring, to be "an eye-opener, in the sense that you witness the practical side of things".
As a break from fisheries duties, she was part of the crew which embarked on a five-week diplomatic/Bord Bia mission to Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, St Petersburg and Tallinn in Estonia. Currently, she is on the LE Eithne and she hopes to specialise in navigation.
She is one of five female cadets and there are 15 female officers. Women are still in a minority, however, at 12 per cent of total, according to the Naval Service press officer, Commander Gerry O'Flynn. He points out that four women have worked as ship's executive officers or second-in-command, and it is only a matter of time before the first woman is appointed a ship's captain.
"It is simply a function of vacancies, qualification, selection and experience," he said.
From the time that a cadet is enlisted, it can take up to 20 years before a command of a ship is a possibility - by which time, he or she could have steamed the equivalent of six times around the world or 210 times around this island.
This could mean that Elizabeth Barrett is in her mid-40s when such an opportunity arises.
Most of her female colleagues are relatively young, and so the ties of domestic life versus a demanding seagoing career haven't become an issue.
And it is not something that Barrett gives any thought to, for her immediate sights are on her commissioning in September, and a return to college after that to take a diploma in nautical science.
She will be back at sea during vacations, she says. "And am I sticking with it? Yes. I am retiring here!"