When he got the chance to work under some traditional shipwrights refitting
Ireland’s last sea-going wooden sailing ship, Michael Ruane wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass. The 55-year-old Mayo-born engineer loves traditional boats, co-owns a Galway hooker and regularly travels to Britain to sail an 80-foot sailing trawler.

He’s only just back from the three-day workshop at picturesque Oldcourt on the Ilen River in the west Cork town of Skibbereen and he’s already planning his next visit. He was one of six volunteers helping to rebuild the Irish-designed ketch Ilen, Ireland’s last coastal trading vessel and the largest Irish-built wooden trading vessel in existence.

One of a kind
“I wanted to lend a hand with the rebuilding of the Ilen – it’s the only one of its kind in Ireland and it needs to be preserved and rebuilt. It’s a very important part of our maritime history,” Ruane says.

Designed by pioneering voyager Conor O’Brien and launched in 1926, the 56-foot Ilen spent the majority of her working life in the Falkland Islands before being repatriated in 1998 by the charitable trust AK Ilen.

The rebuild programme, which has been ongoing through monthly workshops for more than a year, is part of a project run by the AK Ilen Company, which has been central in researching, publishing and promoting wooden boats in Ireland for more than 10 years.

Educating the people
The organisation is dedicated to education through wooden boat building and sailing on the sea. One of its first tasks was the reconstruction and sailing of the Ilen, which is being rebuilt at the AK Ilen Wooden Boat Building School in Roxboro, Limerick as well as through the workshops.

So far, there have been 13 workshops in Skibbereen, attracting people from teenagers to enthusiasts in their 70s. Fachtna O’Sullivan, the senior shipwright on the project, is a relative of one of the Ilen’s original builders.

All welcome
Gary MacMahon, co-founder and director of the AK Ilen company with Brother Anthony Keane of Glenstal Abbey, says: “We’ve had engineers, solicitors, schoolteachers, students, carpenters and unemployed people – the build programme has a huge attraction for all ages. The workshops are essentially open to anybody who is interested. They’re designed for the general public.”

Each month, people such as Michael Ruane – some from around Ireland, others from as far away as Spain and Israel – travel to the workshop on the Ilen River and, for three full days, dedicate themselves completely to the shipwright’s art.

Learn new skills
They study the terminology of boat building and the components of a wooden boat, learn some of the skills, and get to know the different woods used and their individual properties.

The course is free, although participants generally donate towards the cost of the materials and everyone pitches in.

They’re currently working on rebuilding the vessel’s Irish oak frame. “We’ve been measuring new oak frames and cutting them from sawn oak and fitting them into place,” explains Ruane. “Essentially we’re rebuilding the skeleton of the ship. We work on the boat from about 9am to 5pm and it’s good fun. We’re working under the direction of qualified shipwrights so I’ve learned an awful lot of new techniques and it’s been very useful.”

However, three days just isn’t enough for him: “I intend to come back and do it all again. Hopefully I’ll be back in Skibbereen to work with them on the rigging.”