The Ilen, the last surviving Irish timber trading ketch, has been purchased from the Hunt Museum by a new charity which is refitting the boat for its base at the Custom House Quay, Limerick.
The boat, designed in 1925 by Conor O'Brien, the first amateur yachtsman to sail around the world via the Cape of Good Hope, Cape Horn and Cape Leeuwin, Australia, was rediscovered on the Falkland Islands four years ago.
"I had known about the existence of the boat for about 10 years and one day I set about tracing its history," Mr Gary MacMahon, a director of the newly formed AK Ilen charity, said at the signing-over ceremony last weekend.
The 56-foot ketch was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company in 1927 a year after it was built at the Fishery Schools in Baltimore.
The original brass plate, testifying to its owners, was still on the boat when it was bought from its last Falklands owner in March, 1997, a few years after it ceased commercial use.
It is currently at Hegarty's boatyard in Oldcourt, Co Cork, near the river it is named after. There, traditional boat-makers are working on its hull.
Mr MacMahon, a Limerick-based graphic artist, said he expected the boat to be at the old 18th century quay in Limerick by the winter when work would continue on it.
He is looking for corporate sponsorship.
Conor O'Brien, a naval architect who was involved in the 1914 gun-running to Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, for the Irish Volunteers, was from Ardagh but lived on Foynes Island.
His 30,000-mile 24-month circumnavigation on the Saoirse, one of the first Irish-registered vessels, was completed in June, 1925.
The voyage is recounted in his book, Across Three Oceans.
On his return, he was commissioned to design and build a sister vessel for the Falkland Islands Company.
The Ilen spent its first months on the Shannon estuary at Foynes, making its arrival in Limerick a homecoming of sorts.
Mr MacMahon, an amateur sailor and maritime historian, said the newly constituted Ilen would be a community-based project which would remind people of the influence of the sea on Limerick.
"It is for communities on the west coast of Ireland. The virtue of this boat is you will be able to go up rivers and estuaries and visit communities," he said.
At last weekend's ceremony at the Hunt Museum was Mr Murrough O'Brien, also from Foynes Island, a nephew of Conor O'Brien's.
As a child, he was on both the Saoirse and the Ilen.
"The first pineapple I saw came on Saoirse," he said.
From the Falklands was Ms Anne Cameron, daughter of a former governor, Sir Herbert Henniker Heaton, who was also on board both boats. As a 10-year-old, she remembers Conor O'Brien and the Saoirse when he arrived at the islands in December, 1924.
"I remember being taken out as children. We used to go out to the outer harbour, myself and my sister and my brother. We were given jobs to do on board. He was very kind to us as children.'
Her daughter, Ms Jane Cameron, government archivist on the Falklands, said Mr O'Brien had made a big impression on the islanders, especially on the children.
"Transport and communications had always been difficult. There were a lot of outlying islands and rough seas so it was difficult to get mail . . . The children there were fascinated as he was wearing shorts and they had never seen a grownup person wearing shorts before."
The Ilen is a larger version of the 42-foot Saoirse, which was destroyed in a hurricane in Jamaica in 1979.
Mr Liam McElligott, chairman of Shannon Development, said the Ilen's restoration was a relatively simple project but as important as the Asgard project.
"It is a fantastic project, that you can get a vessel of such historical importance to Ireland and restore it."