Pleasure boat business is plain sailing for M’che‡l

Date Published: {J}

Mícheál Ó Cionna’s career in engineering veered towards tourism thanks to his own interest in boating and water based activities.

Mícheál, a Dubliner who has been in Galway for nearly twenty years, is the managing director of no less than four different tourist operations, all boat related. The lasted project involves city canal cruises in Dublin on a barge!

Summer holidays during childhood were always spent in Carraroe in the Connemara Gaeltacht, which explains his fluency in the Irish language and his lifelong love of sailing.

“I started sailing when I was only ten in the Blessington Lake and then on dinghies bought by my father to while away the six weeks we spent in Carraroe every summer.”

It wasn’t until years later that he would encounter his first Galway Hooker which enhanced his lifelong love of the sea.

Meanwhile, he studied engineering in Merrion Street in a premises which now houses the Taoiseach’s office in Dublin and after he graduated in 1983, he landed his first job in Inneal Dóitín Teo in Spiddal.

“Once I was down in Galway, I took up sailing and started to get to know people working on a Gleoiteog (a traditional hooker) and yes, I was hooked!” he smiles.

He became part of a group which built a hooker from scratch and admits his engineering skills came in handy on that project.

Mícheál met Jackie, the woman who was to become his wife, in Kinvara, in Wrinkle’s Hotel, which he describes as “a happening place in those days”.

They were both into traditional music and it was a given that Galway would be their home after they married in 1992.

Going against the then trend to live in the suburbs if not in the countryside, they bought a site in Bowling Green where they constructed a three-storey building, divided into three apartments, which was designed by local architect, Pat McCabe.

They lived in one apartment and family members lived in the other two. They still live there with their two children Eoin (13) and Aoife (9) and can’t imagine living anywhere else.

“We thought we were in heaven living in the heart of Galway with its live music scene, its many festivals and also close to the water.

“But as it happens, just as we were about to start our married life, Jackie got a job in Belmullet and I got a job in Thermo King who wanted me to set up a factory in Dublin, so Galway was half way for both of us!”

However, within a few years, Jackie got a job with the Galway Civic Trust and Mícheál returned to work in Galway with AMT in Nun’s Island, which was part of NUIG. They could both finally walk to work!

During those first few years they had built a hooker and set up a company called Seol Siar (Sail West) which provided sailing holidays.

The boat was fully kitted out with sleeping quarters for six guests and two crew and for five years, they both ran the company, Micheál’s first foray into tourism.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.