The boat can be safely left for visits to Westport which is a taxi ride away. The complex drumlin coastline with its countless anchorages is perfectly explored by boat and nowhere is more central, convenient or scenic as Rosmoney. The bay was also home to Glenans Sailing School which is no longer sadly.įrom a sailing point if view Clew Bay, thickly studded with islands and surrounded with mountains, is one of the most magnificent of the great inlets on the west coast of Ireland. There have currently more than 250 members taking part in various water activities during the season.
Today Rosmoney is home to the Mayo Sailing Club which was established in 1976 to promote sailing in Clew Bay. Four years later Yoko Ono sold the island, donating the sale price to an Irish orphanage. Yoko Ono said that Dornish was " a place where we thought we could escape the pressures and spend some undisturbed time together”. Later Lennon told the New York Times he planned to retire to Dorninish and had even restarted plans to build on the island when he was killed in 1980. The band of 30 hippies hacked it out on the island longer than most would have, but in 1972 the community finally disbanded after strong winds helped a dropped oil lamp to destroy their tents. Image: Jack Mitchell via CC ASA 4.0Known in Carnaby Street as the “King of the Hippies”, to establish his utopian vision of a commune on the island. Little has changed since and the swarm of drumlins is unlike anything else in western Europe. The mountain is Ireland's famous ‘Holy Mountain', also known as “ The Reek”, and the author William Makepeace Thackeray wrote of the 19th-century vista he took in from there “…the bay and the Reek, which sweeps down to the sea, and a hundred isles in it were dressed up in gold and purple and crimson, with the whole cloudy west in a flame. It is one of nature’s great spectacles and a climb to the summit of Croagh Patrick will provide the perfect vista. It isn’t hard to be inspired by Clew Bay. This name is believed to have come from the translation of the Irish word for apples, ubhall or ull and it is thought the island swarm, which look like apples floating in the water, could have given rise to this connection. According to legend, Clew Bay gave West Mayo its ancient name of ‘ Umhall’. Local lore suggests that there is one island for each day of the year. Image: Pvincent2097 via CC ASA 3.0But being open to the sea the Clew Bay drumlins are eroding away leaving them sloping from west to east with massive seaward facing boulder clay cliffs. Inish Turk Beg one of Clew Bay's Drumlin isles A rock, marked by a starboard-hand buoy that dries to 0.1 metres, extends out twice this distance 200 metres east of the entrance and is very much in the way of vessels making towards the jetty and pier.
Keep off the shore to the north of Rosmoney Shore east of the point as it drys out to 60 metres and is shallow beyond. Favour the Collan More Island side of a centre channel approach when entering Collan More Harbour. The pass is 200 metres wide but the drying shores of the islands on either side encroach upon the channel reducing the navigable entrance to a with of about 45 metres with 1.7 metres of water. This channel passes between the southeast end of Collan More Island and Rosmoney Point opposite, the northern extremity of Rosmoney Hill. When the water deepens to 8 metres or more you have arrived in the Sruhnameel Channel. Stay about 150 metres off the south coast of Collan More Island keeping an astern alignment of Inishgort Lighthouse in line with the northmost point of Inishlyre Island. The path then bends southeastward to pass between Collan More Island, to the northeast, and Inishlyre, 600 metres to the south to pass over Inishlyre Harbour, immediately east of Inishlyre. This will lead about midway between 21-metre high Collan Beg Islet, to the north, and the 27-metre high Inishlyre Islet, to the south. When Inishgort lighthouse comes abeam steer for the 48-metre high summit of Collan More Hill 1⅓ miles east by northeast. Approaching the entrance between Inishgort Lighthouse and the Dorinish buoyįrom the initial fix pass close to the Dorinish buoy Fl.G.