R3
Owner
Joe & Maire Keenan
Provenance
The last of the first batch of three Rankin dinghies built by Eric, circa 1960. Pearse O’Leary bought her in 1966 having answered an add in the “Examiner”. According to his son Frank “at that stage the boat was immaculate, fully varnished inside and out”. Some years later, Frank’s siblings helped their Dad by using a blow torch on the boat to strip back the varnish, after which the boat was always painted! The family used her in Ardmore and Derrynane over the years. Frank (then having a young family to care for) had buoyancy tanks installed in the stem and stern of the boat by Dave O’Keeffe in the 90’s. The O’Leary family sold the boat to Joe English who had Mark Bushe carry out repairs (see R33 for more info). The boat was sold on in 2012 to Martin Ó Treasaigh who kept her mainly in West Cork, introducing his young family to the magic of small boat sailing. Martin sold the boat to the present owners in 2023. The boat at that stage needed some serious TLC and over the winter of 23/24 and 24/25 Owen O’Connell carried out the work to return the boat to as close to its original state as possible (see blog article).
Her main construction / design features are:-
- All as per R1, one assumes as prior to restoration in 23/24 many of the details were missing.
- The side seats only ran between the aft thwart and the main thwart as discovered in the 23/24 works.
- An “Hour Glass” support was added to the main thwart as part of the 23/24 works to remove “spring”.
