SWORDS sailing and boating club was one of the big local beneficiaries this week when it received a Sport Capital Grant of €23,539. Committee member Donal Brennan hopes it will bring more attention to the fantastic amenity which exists in the area that he believes quite a lot of people are unaware of.
“We have a very well laid out development plan,” said Brennan. “We have plans put in place for the future of the club and we really hope to bring further interest in sailing and boating into the area.
“Our main target would be to bring more people into the club and sport. We really have been pushing to expand the club and this extra funding should go a long way to doing that.
“We currently have about 120 members including families and children that are attached to Swords sailing, but I really believe that a lot of people don’t get involved with our type of sport because they think it is only for wealthy people.
“The club already have plenty of boats for our members to use and now hopefully with this capital injection we can buy a few more boats for the members to use.
“It really is a fantastic amenity and I’m surprised that more people haven’t gotten involved with it. I think if more people gave it a chance they would release how fantastic the estuary is.
“The Broadmeadow Estuary is well known for being a well sheltered, safe location with very little tidal effect which makes it perfect for the sport.
“We have a very active junior section of the club who take part in dinghy racing along with the adults and we also have a fully licensed ISA training facility.
“Certainly, at this time of the year things can get fairly quiet, but during the summer we have a programme devoted to getting the sport established among the youth of the area, which is very affordable.
“We’ll have a sail on New Year’s Day to get the year underway and we hope we can do great things in 2013.”
Elsewhere in the Swords area, the Aer Lingus Divers were awarded with a sum €19,040; the Aer Lingus Swimming Club (not connected to Aer Lingus airline) received addition funding of €12,900; the Aer Lingus Tennis Club obtained a grant of €25,000; and Hokubu Dojo received €3,593 all from the sports capital grants.
