Why bother ??

"A site about currachs" you might say. "Why bother ??". Have a read of this then and come back..

The people that lived with and from these boats were great people and these are great boats.

The Quilty Currach Building Course

Well, 3 Aran-style 3-hand currachs were built and launched on August 15th 2004 in Quilty following a 6 day course given by Padraig O'Duinnin from Meitheal Mara. Details, photos, measurements, and course accounts can be seen here.

Excerpts from the book "British Coracles and Irish Currachs", 1936

In 1936 a fine gentleman, named James Hornell, wandered around the coast of ireland documenting the various types of canvas covered boats being used at that time. His book is, in my current knowledge, the most comprehensive description of Irish currachs/naomhogs and is worth the read. Since Mr. Hornell is gone to the great currach in the sky I've taken the liberty of transforming the chapters pertaining to Ireland ( thanks to Donal initial copy of the book ) into PDF format for your perusal right here. Its 3Mb in size so don't try this unless you have a decent internet connection or time to spare.

The Absolutely Ultimate List of Currach Links

• Meitheal Mara, the top men and women down in Cork who teach currach-building/racing/eating/drinking/sleeping. The fundamentalists of the currach/naomhog fraternity, these people believe in the holistic healing power of boats. They might be right.
• West Clare Currachs a community based currach/canoe building group who have built 4 canoes over the course of the year and are currently racing/training.
• The plans and materials used for building the 3 aran style currachs

Drawings of various currachs taken from the book "British Coracles and Irish Currachs"

• I have extracted the drawings from the Hornell book mentioned above which can be seen here. There are drawings of Achill Island Currachs, Aran Islands Currach, Donegal paddling Currach, Iniskea Island Currachs, Kilkee Currachs & Ross-a-dilisk Currachs.

No point having a currach site if there isn't at least one photo

This one was taken at the launch in Quilty, August 15th 2004.

By the way, Mark wasn't asleep, just meditating on the rhythm.

Things to do

First thing to say is that this site is a work in progress and I hope that you will include yourself in this work. "How ?" you may ask, well this site is a wiki, that means you/anyone can edit it directly from a web-browser. See the "Edit" in the top left, well click on it, it'll ask you to register and once registered you can do whatever you want. Madness you might say, but no, no. Everything is tracked, so if you do something really silly, I ( or you ) can always roll-back your mistakes. For an idea of the format used to write wiki pages have a look at the text formatting rules. You can use any of the images I have stored here so go ahead, please.....

• Take the photos of the materials/plans and translate to text and clearer graphics
• Get measurements for a West-Clare canoe, maybe the one Michael Falsey has outside his house.
• Get info/photos about the seasamh-seol, the mast-fitting for fitting a sail.
• Get info on the thing that can be hung off the stern when using a sail.
• Get info on the best kind of currach trailer available, specifically look for ideas which would allow one person to launch a currach.

• finished_html.zip:

to top