29 March 2024 The Irish Film & Television Network
     
Timesnap Set Sail with 'Howth 17s'
14 Jun 2010 :
Howth 17
Bill Tyson (Make it Stop) is currently putting the finishing touches on ‘Howth 17s – A Century of Sailing’, a half hour documentary that examines a 100 year old tradition of a community of boat lovers and their boat – miniature versions of 19th century racing yachts.

Howth 17s are sailing craft that look like miniatures of the great racing yachts of the 1800s – often wondered at by Northsiders out for a Sunday stroll on Howth pier. Built in 1898, they are the oldest ‘keel boats’ in the world still racing – and the reason behind Bill Tyson’s latest documentary. “An unusual love story,” is how producer and director, Bill describes the fly-on-the-wall documentary. “It’s about passion, obsession, hard work, communal effort and downright pig-headedness on the part of the owners to keep them not only afloat but racing hard week in week out,” he says. ”You can’t simply buy one of these boats. If you want to own one you must first prove to the committee that you are worthy of the honour – that your character is up to the challenge of keeping a 110-year-old wooden boat in top racing condition.”

The owners of the boats have gone to great lengths to maintain the number of boats it has always had – 17. To date only two boats have been lost – both sunk while racing in rough weather decades ago despite extensive underwater searches to recover them - and two were rebuilt to replace them.

Shot on high def Sony EX1 by Shane Tobin (Do Not Pass Go) over the course of a full sailing season, the half hour documentary captures the beauty of these amazing craft against the scenic backdrop of Howth. “The boats are astonishingly graceful but there were a lot of challenges shooting them,” Shane Tobin tells us. “The biggest ones were jumping out of the way of the crew and keeping the camera dry, while filming live races from the boats; which as a novice sailor is quite terrifying. Howth in the summer is one of the most spectacular places in Ireland and we think we really captured that in the piece.”

The programme is in the final stages of post production in the Timesnap offices and will be broadcast this august by Dublin’s new community station DCTV, which is also the producer. The doc’s budget of €20,000 was provided by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland through the Sound & Vision fund.



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