Slane native shares memories of Boyne Yacht Club in new book
A Slane born botanist whose parents were members of a yacht club based in Mornington from the late 1950s to the 1970s has co authored a book to share her memories of life at sea.
Linda Patton who says her family life “revolved around boats” spent much of her early life in east Meath at events with the Boyne Yacht Club with her boating enthusiast parents, Aileen and Moir Patton.
Boyne Yacht Club was founded in 1955 by a group of locals who excavated an area for mooring boats and eventually built a clubhouse.
It was in operation from 1958 to 1988 but came to a sad end when four members lost their lives at sea with the club never fully recovering from the tragic incidents.
Now Linda together with local author and historian Richard Gerrard have documented the role of the club in the community in “The Boyne Yacht Club, a book chronicling memories, first hand accounts and photographs from members and their families.
But it all happened by accident as Linda explains:
"My parents were Dubliners but moved to Slane before I was born. My dad worked in the Mill, he was the manager of the weaving shed. It closed down and he was made redundant in the 1970s so they moved out to Kilberry.
“One day out out of curiosity I googled my old national school, St Peter’s in Bolton Street in Drogheda and up came something that they were going to produce a book with people’s memories so I eventually got in touch with the author Ricky Gerrard, I wrote my memories and sent them off to him and he got it published in the Drogheda Historical Society Journal.
"At the end of it, although not directly applicable to the national school my parents were members of Boyne Yacht Club and he said that’s really interesting I feel another book coming on!
The rest is now a history book with people like Linda getting to explore their marine past as she explains:
"It is 466 pages of a hardback colour produced book featuring biographies of the ten founding members, memories of the social events, club racing and the regattas."
Linda herself has fond memories of packing up and heading for the coast.
"Our life just revolved around boats, even holidays would involve boats where we would bring our sailing dinghy down to the Shannon,” she said. " In the winter the boat would come home and my dad would be working on it for the next year.
"The club was upstream a little from the Maiden Tower on Crook Road in Mornington. It was on the top of a hill and you could see the Mourne Mountains out the windows of the clubhouse."
The Slane born woman recalls the excitement of a weekend by the sea.
"There was sailing every Sunday so we’d charge down after church. My mum would have a picnic packed and there would be chicken salad in tupperware. On the way we’d stop at the little Mornington store and buy a block of ice-cream for our dessert.
"After lunch people would start wandering in and my parents would go off racing and we would play with children from our school whose parents were also members."
Linda who would later go on to be a botanist says the noises, smells and beauty of the natural world she experienced in Mornington stayed with her throughout her life. She added:
"You’d wander around the dunes, there were lovely orchids there or you’d collect sea shells. I can remember all the mussel shells crunching under your foot when you’d walk down to the river.
"The club members had dug out a little area for their boats, a sort of a pool as it were to launch into and there would be mussel fisherman there as well.”
Linda's parents Aileen and Moir Patton took the utmost pride in whichever boat they had at the time according to the author who said:
"They started with a boat I don’t remember an International 12 and then moved on to an IDRA 14, which was a wooden clinker built 14 foot boat. The club started with a fleet of national 18s, my dad was kind of the odd man out!
"Then he moved not to an Enterprise Dinghy and then in the early 1970s he bought a small little Silhouette Cruiser, that was great fun because we could all go out together then and cruise around.
“An enduring memory of just once being allowed to crew for my dad in very light weather when I was eleven or twelve and it was great fun.
“Around the mid 1970s we moved to the Shannon, he got a bigger cruiser and my parents stayed on the Shannon forever after really, they loved it there."
The Patton's joined the club in late 1958 according to Linda who says her father's love of the water began early on!
"My father's father was into rowing in Dublin, he lived in Sutton and my aunt had told me that, my dad one day tried to row across to Bull Island, there wasn’t a bridge across in those days and he got swept away by the current and ended up down by Sutton Creek while his mum was running all the down the shore yelling help help!
Linda says "the heart was torn out of the club" with four tragedies occurring in 1973 where four people drowned in two separate incidents.
In July 1973 two men lost their lives While competing in a sailing race from Mornington to the Rock-a-Bill Lighthouse, off Skerries and back.
It was the second time in six months that tragedy hit the club with two of its members drowned off Balbriggan at the end of January.
"I can remember going out searching for bodies," recalls Linda. "I was too young at the time to know who they were but it's something I'll never forget.
"The club was never really the same after that and eventually closed in 1988."
The Boyne Yacht Club 1954-1988 by Richard Gerrard & Linda Patton is on sale priced €30 plus €10 p&p. Email ricky_gerrard@yahoo.co.uk or call 087-9763689.