It starts with a dark seawater patch to the port or starboard. A flash warning sign the wind is about the change. Time to duck or dive and then pull on the sail like crazy before something else changes too.
It’s not even that rough out here. We’re within the confines of Dún Laoghaire harbour in a motorised rib and racing along in the slipstream of the brightest prospects in Irish sailing. They’re the ones doing all the ducking and diving and everything in between.
Thursday afternoon, a sort of open training day, we cast off from the Irish Sailing Performance HQ, on the grounds of the Commissioners of Irish Lights at Harbour Road.
For the strictly uninitiated like me it’s soon a proper up-close insight into the sheer skill and startling physicality involved in sailing.
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It’s nothing fancy and doesn’t need to be: three portable containers, set close to the old Coast Guard cottages (soon to be restored for HQ accommodation) is where elite Irish sailing does all its planning and training, the ocean their only necessary playground.
The next major port of call is the Paris Olympics, in sailing’s case the coast off Marseilles, only that’s still some distance away. The World Championships in the Hague, this August, is the first of four qualifying regattas. There’s good reason to be hopeful.
James O’Callaghan, Irish Sailing performance director, sits in our rib, providing a running commentary; the focus for Paris is on three boat classes, the 49er (the men’s double-handed skiff), and the ILCA 6/ILCA 7 (pronounced Il-Ca, the one-person dinghy formerly branded the Laser Standard/Radial).
Rory Fitzpatrick, Irish Sailing head coach, is in a smaller rib, shouting instructions to the various boats as they sail twisting and turning around the buoys.
Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan, the Royal Cork Yacht Club duo, are putting are a pure exhibition in the 49er, fast and furious.
Eve McMahon, just 19, is in her ILCA 6, formerly the Laser Radial, the exact same boat Annalise Murphy won her Olympic silver medal in Rio in 2016.
On entirely justifiable grounds McMahon, already an Irish Sailing Academy member, is tipped for similar success, having won the Triple Crown of World and European Youth titles last summer, just weeks after completing her Leaving Cert.
Among them too is Rocco Wright, still only 17, also a World Youth champion in ILCA 6 last summer, adding a European bronze in Italy earlier this month.
Back on dry land, McMahon, describes sailing as a sport of decision-making. It’s a lot more than that; this isn’t even her main training session of the day, having earlier completed a 65-km cycle from HQ out to Ballyboughal, in north county Dublin, along with her strength and conditioning coach Mark McCabe.
“Our regattas are long events, six days usually, and you can be out on the water for six hours, each race about an hour long,” she says. “So we do a lot of endurance training, and cycling is very long hours, out there for 2½ hours.
“You need that huge endurance base behind you, to last that length of the regatta. The concentration is one thing, but the fitness levels is the other thing, keep that endurance up. We also have three gym sessions a week, and are out on the water, five days, Monday to Friday. Then we break at weekend, unless we’re away racing, when that all changes.
“Since moving into the senior fleet, if you are ahead, it’s extremely hard to stay ahead, the racing is so fast. So you have to stay concentrated the entire hour, dealing with all the different variables, tide, wind, waves, everything like that.
“It’s a very difficult sport like that, but I love it all the same.”
Indeed McMahon is clearly passionate about sailing, dispelling many myths about it too: yes, the family live in Sutton, close to the sea, only she wasn’t necessarily born into the sport.
![Eve McMahon: 'Of course Annalise [Murphy] has been a big inspiration. I remember her giving me her autograph when I was very young. I never once thought I’d be training alongside her, then race against her.' Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/Z4I3RUJMNVEI3KWFAXHMQF5MSU.jpg?auth=f2886ae6d172a9f80d388a28de9175dfdb345e74fd492868cd769f1aa27b7e2f&width=800&height=533)
“My dad [Jim] did a small bit of sailing, nothing too much, my mum [Vicky] gets seasick anytime she’s on a boat. So it is crazy, really, how much our family have got into sailing, just from the siblings.
“My two older brothers [Jamie and Evan] were previously on this team [the Irish Sailing Academy], and I just followed their footsteps, really. Summer courses in Howth Yacht Club, started competing then, and just followed through. I played a small bit of hockey, but I always knew it would be sailing, to be honest.
“Being McMahons, we were nicknamed the McAcademy. Because at one point, on the youth academy, there were more McMahon sailors than any other sailors.”
Her Triple Crown surprised many, Youth Europeans [in Greece], the Youth World [in The Hague], and ILCA’s own World Youths [in Texas], although not herself.
“I did have it in the back of my head, always thought it would be amazing, to leave the youth fleet in that way. I hadn’t done much racing, so didn’t have much expectation, but after I won the Youth Europeans, I was like ‘maybe this is possible’ . . . So I kept quiet, kept humble, and kept going.
“Covid was actually a big help to me, with everything going online, in Fifth Year, I went to Lanzarote, and trained with Annalise, on the run-up to Tokyo.
“Of course Annalise has been a big inspiration. I remember her giving me her autograph when I was very young. I never once thought I’d be training alongside her, then race against her. And watching her medal races just reaffirmed my own dream,
“We also trained alongside the Olympic gold medal winner [from Tokyo], Anne-Marie Rindom from Denmark, and they’ve been a massive help, to me. Then for Sixth Year, I had to knuckle down on the study, kept some fitness up, and once the Leaving Cert was done, I went straight back into racing.”
Mention Paris to her and she doesn’t duck or dive, even if that Olympic ambition may ultimately have to wait another four years.
“Well that’s what I’m going for. I have my goal in mind, a job to do, so it’s about putting the head down. I’ve been training since I was very young, always trying to get into the hardest fleet, I feel you just have to put everything you have into it, absolutely no regrets, and that’s what I’m trying to do.
“Now I’m out of the under-19s, it’s a really big jump, but I wanted to get in there very young, to get used to the shock of it all, trying to compete against them, try beat them, to be honest. It’s just about making the most of the time you have. I’ve given up a lot of social life, but that’s all part of the game.”
She’s studying full-time too, first year of International Commerce at UCD, on the Ad Astra Scholarship programme.
“I have that opinion it’s important to continue the education, to have some normal life, and obviously sailing doesn’t last forever. I’m really lucky to have some of my own private sponsors, because it is a hugely costly sport, yes, I’m very lucky have a lot of support on my side
“It’s nice being in college though because I think you can switch off from training, when you’re doing college work, so it’s good for the brain actually, to switch off like that.”
Because once she’s out on the playground of Dún Laoghaire harbour there’s only one thing on her mind.
