I grew up in Rosses Point and for a long time, Sligo Yacht Club was like a second home to me. Coming from a large family of sailors, I did my first sailing courses as a kid there and finally progressed through the ranks to work as an Instructor in the club. I spent a couple of years competing in the Mirror class with my younger sister, but never very competitively. I loved racing with my friends, but could never commit to the training necessary to get to the top end of the fleet.

My first experience with the Fireball fleet was maybe 10 years ago when they ran a national event in Sligo. I had been working as an Instructor in Sligo Yacht Club for the season, and we were all drafted in to help as rescue crew for the event. Coming from a background in Mirrors and GP14’s, I was used to big events but the Fireball was something new to me. I remember being amazed at the size of the spinnaker and the strength of the different fittings on the boats, although the number of boats I helped tow back to shore with broken masts that week made me rather wary of getting into a Fireball myself.

Since then, like many people my age, I drifted away from competitive sailing for a while. I took up Kitesurfing and really enjoyed the power and speed available in that new sport, but some part of me missed the competitive edge that is only available in a one design dinghy fleet. With the announcement that the Fireball worlds were to be held in Sligo, I started to take an interest in the fleet, but had no real notion of competing until my dad, Bryan, met Martin O’Toole from Skerries Sailing Club. Martin had recently built a new Fireball, and since my dad was an experienced boat builder, they got talking straight away. Martin had built a mould for his Fireball, taking the shape from one of the top boats. My dad jokingly asked for the loan of the mould, Martin jokingly offered it, and a few weeks later I arrived on his doorstep with a trailer, ready to lug the mould back to Sligo!

We got started straight away, and the boat began to take shape. We were unfamiliar with the layout of the boat, and since there is no Fireball fleet in Sligo, there weren’t many boats around to study. Thankfully, my father’s experience of building boats has helped us over the major hurdles and we are really getting there. Most of the internal structure of the boat is finished and we are hoping to get the decks on in the next week or two. The main parts of the boat are built from 4mm and 6mm marine plywood. The plywood panels are stuck together using epoxy resin and glass fiber tape. The rest of the wood used is a mixture of Obeche and Mahogany. The Obeche is a light, white wood and we are using it in areas where strength isn’t too important. We got this beautiful wood from a local coffin builders; it’s hard to believe they were going to put in into the ground! The dark mahogany is used in areas where we need lots of strength and where we need to place fittings. Mahogany is now a very rare and valuable wood - it’s nearly impossible to buy in the amounts that we needed. Luckily, my dad has been collecting bits of mahogany for years, scavenging it from old boats and bits of thrown out furniture. These pieces have been waiting in the shed, untouched for years, “until the time is right”.

A local Kitesurfing friend has been sailing Fireballs for years and lent us his boat to try, and a few weeks ago, we picked up an older boat for half nothing, to help us get started on some training. I’ll be sailing the Worlds with my little sister Beth - the same sister who used to crew for me in the Mirror. This time the roles are reversed and she will be doing the driving while I supply the weight out on the trapeze. Beth is one of the top young sailors in the club and last year she came second in the Mirror European championships in SYC. I like to think I taught her everything she knows, but we both know better at this stage. She’s clearly the more talented sailor and I hope I can live up to her high standards in the front of the boat.

It’s really exciting to be entering the Worlds on our local patch at our first Fireball event. I hope we don’t embarrass ourselves and I really hope we can do justice to the beautiful boat our dad is building.

I’d love to see a Fireball fleet grow in SYC; the sailing is fast, fun and sometimes a bit scary. For me, it’s the perfect mix between the power and speed of Kitesurfing and the competitive side of dinghy sailing. Like me, many of the people who have grown out of Mirrors have lost touch with sailing; I think the Fireball is a perfect boat for people who want to try something less tactical and a little faster than the GP14.