There was a strange juxtaposition in Galway Port this week. The Marine Institute’s shiny new super-bád, the Tom Crean purred its way out of the harbour, ready to shimmy its way down to Kerry where it will be officially unveiled today.
It looked dressed for the part, all squeaky clean like a groom leaving his mammy’s house for the last time before his wedding. Waving goodbye to the lads and wishing it could stay on a while longer to enjoy the party.
Somewhere, Tom Crean was looking down on this, a century or more after the Kerryman’s own heroics. As soon as the boat pulled out on the waters, another hero shaped in his own mould was making his own triumphant return.
A century on, Crean is inspiring the occupants of the vessel named in his honour, driving them to discover more about the wonder of the ocean, and right now, young people are being inspired by what Damian Browne did as he arrived after his mammoth journey, complete with a Tom Hanks in CastAway beard, relieved to be back in his own place, having hit another target in his remarkable life of extreme achievement.
Ireland’s first solo transatlantic oarswoman Kinvara-based Dr Karen Weekes thrilled us all some time back as we followed her amazing solo adventure and what an enthralling story, she tells of her adventures on the waves; tales of an environment and experience most of us will never experience. And because of that, society needs heroes to go to places like this and push themselves, in the knowledge that their success lifts us all. That it is in the telling of the adventure that the real wonder lies.
Every little movement towards home on devices monitoring the progress of Karen Weekes’ and Damian Browne’s vessels inspired us. Unknown to themselves, a nation was willing them on, sending them the energy to keep going.
I quote from Rye Aker’s poem Out Here, penned this week in honour of Damian Browne (featured in Vox Galvia on Page 72 of this paper ) which gives us an insight into the mind of the solo oarsman.
“You’d miss talking shite to a seagull
Shooting the breeze with a seal.
Out here, it’s just me… and them.
The pure of the pure. Not a sinner.
Unanswerable to anyone or anything but the power
that keeps me there, that throws me this way and that.
Me, a veritable plaything for Poseidon.”
And how joyous we all were to see him, and to honour Tom Crean, because it is the people like Crean and Browne and Weekes who push the boundaries to see how much human endeavour can persevere.
Crean and Browne and Weekes are all superb physical specimens, built for that sort of adventure, and able to articulate it, so that they can inspire us all. We would all love to strap ourselves to a glass fibre boat and take on the ocean, or scale the highest mountains or plod on through the most inhospitable places on earth, but most of us cannot or will not do it. However, the sight and sound of someone else doing it inspires all of us to climb our own personal Everests, to cross our own stormy waters.
People like Browne and Weekes and Crean know that too; that such examinations of themselves were really acid tests in showing just how resilient we all can be if it is needed.
Well done to Damian and Karen and to all those who follow in their footsteps, to aim for the possible, and to push that bar higher,
We are lifted by their tales, and to illustrate this, like in medieval times, the town rushed to the port this week to greet him. The boat horns echoing over the city. These adventurers are the fuel that help us all get through the battle of life. Keep on thrilling us...and enjoy that Snackbox.
