Laytown, County Meath, Ireland
SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 2003
Alan Watson lives overlooking the beach at Laytown and has been sailing there for well over 10 years. Laytown is 40 minutes north of Dublin and is the only worthwhile beach near Dublin.
There's Howth/Dollymount effectively in Dublin itself, but that's probably only a mile or so long, and where's the point in sailing there when there's Alan's place a mere hour's drive north?
You can drive your car on to both beaches, so both are likely to get crowded on sunny days, hence presumably the desire for Regulation. It seems that virtually everywhere is under threat from Officialdom, but Alan's on the case at Laytown, and has gone on a "soft charm offensive". The local Council is keen to get everything regulated out on the beach, but luckily Alan knows the right people so sandyachting is not under threat.
Living on the beach, Alan is perfectly placed to keep the local sandyachters organised. His garden is stocked with sandyachts. Everywhere you look there's sandyachts. Three or four Class 5s, four Minis, a Seagull Dauphin, a Seagull Quebec, and doubtless a few others that I didn't notice..
He'd organised a Jolly Weekend to celebrate the arrival of summertime clocks-wise, inspired by a fantastic weekend's sailing over Paddy's weekend whilst we Brits were in action at Brean - where we had decent easterlies and glorious sunshine. Brean faces west, so the easterlies weren't much use, and I'd been thinking at Brean that they'd be having a lovely time of it over at east-facing Laytown, which indeed they did, sailing end-to-end all day long.
Alan had hoped for a repeat performance, so he invited the local parakarters (five) along, and also invited RTE (their BBC) along to film some wholesome fun on the beach. He also rang the relevant dignitaries, who were all in favour of a spot of local publicity, and even removed a burned out car from the beach that had been there for three weeks and was lowering the tone of the area.
Being a sucker for a film crew and having sampled Alan's hospitality before, I couldn't resist it.
The Friday afternoon ferry from Pembroke to Rosslare followed by a 3-hour drive north meant arrival at Alan's by 10pm, just in time to pop down the pub - until 2am.
As we all know, you cannot predict what a day's sailing is going to be like until the day arrives. After 10 days of windless sunshine it was obvious from the weather charts that more of the same was foreseeable, and so it duly was.
Alan's phone was ringing all morning on the Saturday as the locals checked in to see if the day was going to be spent sailing, gardening or entertaining the family. As the wind, if any, was from the north - straight down the beach - we'd need to be tacking across banks, ripples, streams and ponds, avoiding stones and rocks, from land to sea and we'd need a decent breeze given the terrain so Alan was forced to recommend the gardening option.
Then the camera crew turned up at noon, and left eight hours later having filmed everything that moved. The wind, when present, was light and the beach was in a shocking state - in accordance with Sod's Law, it having been perfect two weeks ago - so only the lightest kids could get going in the Minis, or the adults in the four modern Class 5s.
The kids kept those seven Minis going for a good six hours, round a 30-yard course on a nice dry bank, suitably supervised by the adults, and all of them got filmed and interviewed. The adults got filmed in their 5s, and the parakarters had their turn too up at the north end of the beach.
After seven hours of filming, allegedly for a 6-minute slot on the RTE Nationwide programme on Monday 7th April at 7pm, I reckon the man had enough footage for a good six half-hour documentaries. I was filmed reversing my van in to Alan's garden (four times!), unloading, assembling and rigging a Mini and my Class 5 on Alan's lawn - with a decidedly suburban backdrop and not within sight of the beach.
Assembling the c5 was fun - it was out of the van and assembled in seconds, and very convincingly too. Even Alan was impressed. Then, when the cameraman had gone, I gave it a tap with my foot and it collapsed onto the ground. I got filmed pushing the c5, sitting in it becalmed, more pushing, a little bit of rattling along over the ripples, and finally, dragging it exhausted off the beach, drysuit half off, while the camera zoomed in on the "Snailspeed Sandyachting" stickers on the side of the seat. Well, that's how it seemed to me.
I did enjoy some charging about over the ripples and through the pools and streams, but the kids kept those Minis going round and round for well over six hours. With any luck RTE will be showing six minutes of the kids having good wholesome fun in the sunshine.
Sunday? Well, the clocks went forward an hour, so the tide was safely in when there was a semblance of breeze which died away as the tide went out, which in turn coincided with the start of the England v Ireland Rugby match, so I was able to watch a relentless English victory, then drive south in glorious sunshine for the homeward ferry, on deserted roads that enabled me to do a detour to check out a beautiful but un-named beach at the absolute SE tip of Ireland, where the sun set spectacularly over a mill-pond sea.
The ferry was deserted, and this was written sitting in the bar on the ferry - an immense room taking up half a deck - occupied by six people. One, the barman, was watching the huge TV screen, the other five weren't, and three of them were snoring loudly.
So that's how it was...
Cheer
Andy
