The boats in the Volvo Ocean Race lined up in the docks in Galway at 8 am this morning. Green Dragon is the nearest boat of the four tied up. Larger version here.
There was a time when the prospect of Viking sailing ships approaching an Irish inlet at dawn would strike fear. No more – the bonfires lit on the Aran Islands last night were to welcome a lot of tired sailors to Galway. When the lead boat of the Volvo Ocean Race – Sweden’s Ericsson 4 – arrived in Galway Harbour last night, there was still plenty of people around to welcome them [no sober people, mind]. The Sino-Irish entry, Green Dragon, came in third.
Close up of Ericsson 4, the winner of the Boston-Galway leg of the Volvo Ocean Race, and the overall race leader. The boat arrived in around 4am, and by 8am, it was hoisted out of the water, with the mast removed. Larger version here.
The boats took around 7 and a half days to cross from Boston to Galway – a journey of over 2,500 nautical miles. Another boat in the competition, Ericsson 3, had an experience that might have come straight from the story of possibly the first Irish travellers across the Atlantic. St. Brendan, who set off west looking for the Garden of Eden around 1500 years ago, could have identified with the crew of Ericsson 3, whose boat hit a whale on the second day out of Boston, and sailed the rest of the journey with a damaged keel fin [no word on how the whale fared afterwards].
Entertainment at every level – residents of a dockland apartment enjoy a barbecue [lower left hand corner of picture] while overlooking the festivities in the Festival village below last night.Larger version here.
If you are anywhere near Galway (or indeed anywhere in Ireland over the next two weeks), you should really come and visit. The festival village in the Docks is a triumph, and was jammed with people last night. It’s a real credit to the organisers. I made the mistake of having a big meal before heading into town last night – which meant I was too full to sample any of the wonderful and varied food in the village [and since I was driving, I couldn’t sample any of the fare in the bars either]. I was the only one – there was a prodigious amount of drinking going on last night, but the mood of the crowd was good-humoured. It helped that the weather improved yesterday afternoon – when the village opened yesterday morning, it was gloomy and overcast. But in the afternon, the sky cleared and the sun shone – what more could one ask for?
This boat, of the same class as the racing boats, is on display in the festival village. Larger version here.
I strolled back to the Claddagh where I had parked my car at around a quarter past 11 last night. The sky was still mainly clear, and some stars could be seen. As I looked up, a bright star moved steadily eastwards before blinking out – it was the International Space Station flying overhead, and a welcome glimpse of another vessel, sailing the longest voyage of all.
I’m going to create I have created a Volvo Ocean Race Galway Stopover 2009 page on the site for the next couple of weeks where I’ll put pictures and other info [the link should appear later today]. Pix.ie are running a photo competition, as well as a competition to allow two photographers to take pictures from an offical media boat [wouldn’t mind a bit of that].