'It's like winning an Oscar' says award-winning boatbuilder from Mullingar

A West Cork-based boatbuilder from Mullingar has won an award for restoring a 120 year old yacht back to its former glory

Boatbuilder Tiernan Roe, who grew up in Ballinderry, won a Classic Boat Magazine award for restoring Lady Min, a 30ft racing yacht designed and built by Schull merchant Maurice O'Keeffe at the start of the 20th century.

It may have been his hobby, but O'Keeffe was a talented designer and boat builder and the Lady Min continued to sail and, most impressively, win races right up to the mid 1990s.

Mullingar native Tiernan, a former member of the local sailing club who got his love of boats from his late father Billy, was commissioned to bring the Lady Min back to life by O'Keeffe's great grandson.

“It was all together in one piece, but needed a complete rebuild. I more or less took it apart and put it back together again...It was done as I had time and took three or four years. It was a slow enough process. Taking it apart was nearly the hardest things.”

Tiernan, who describes the Classic Boat Magazine Awards as "like winning as Oscar" for the boat restoring community, says that he was pleasantly surprised that he won, as he was up against some stiff competition.

A one-man operation who works out of a workshop at Ballydehob, Tiernan says that the other entries in his category were from much larger boatyards.

“The runner up was a 40ft Norwegian boat from a big yard in Oslo. The other finalists were large, established boat builders.”

The judges told Roe that Lady Min was singled out for a number reasons.

“It is a very nice looking boat and very unusual for the time it was designed. It has a very modern shape and that's what helped it win races too.”

After studying industrial design in college, Roe worked in a variety of different fields including set design, museum fit-outs and sculpting. After working in boat building on and off for around a decade, he started his own business around 15 years ago.

While he says that the award should be good for business, the real satisfaction from a restoration project like the Lady Min is seeing it out back on the water. That the people now sailing the boat are direct descendants of its builder adds a poignancy that other projects may not have.

“The most satisfying thing is getting to see people using it and enjoying it. That's the biggest thing for me.”