Clodagh Finn: Take inspiration from Mary Harper's solo Atlantic voyage at the age of 79
'You sure take a lot of snaps,’ was Mary Harper’s pithy comment to Des Barry of the ‘Irish Examiner’ and other media at Crookhaven Co Cork in August 1994 where she landed after her solo voyage.
I met her there on August 10, one of a media posse fascinated by this slight woman who thought nothing of her achievement. She answered all of our questions as she leaned against an enormous buoy at one end of Crookhaven Harbour. That gave a kind of bounce to everything she said.
She had set out from Newfoundland a few weeks before, not even telling the Canadian coastguard she was going. “I told nobody I was leaving, but now everyone will know what I’ve been up to,” she told the assembled media. “You sure take a lot of snaps!”
She had, in fact, told her son and daughter before she left Long Pond, Newfoundland, on July 14. When they tried to stop her, she told them that she was the mother in the family — hence, the boss.
I remember being in awe of this woman who, despite her quiet departure, was willing to tell her story. She was a native of New York who had moved to Pennsylvania but found she was still far too young to retire. She had friends in their mid-90s who spent their time swimming and skiing and she wanted to pursue her own passion for sailing, which was ignited when she took it up aged 49.
The way she spoke was utterly refreshing. She said she had broken a few ribs during an attempted crossing the previous year; a rogue wave hit her and propelled her from one side of the boat to the other.
I asked her how many ribs she had broken, and she replied that she was not interested in that kind of detail. Her only interest was planning to sail again.
On that day in 1994, she was looking ahead to the next adventure, even after a 23-day and 3,000km crossing in her 30ft sloop Kuan Yin II (named after the Buddhist goddess of mercy). She was going to turn 80 the following May and was hoping to travel down the Amazon in South America.
“Then I will start behaving myself,” she added.
I made a mental note to follow up on her travels, but never quite got around to it — until last week when the next instalment of this amazing woman’s fascinating journey dropped into my inbox, courtesy of the Roaringwater Journal.
In it, Charleville native Brian O’Riordan described meeting Mary Harper the following year on a small polar expedition ship, the Professor Multanovskiy, as it was crossing Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America.
She was 80 by then but had no difficulty making her way around the ship as 40ft waves crashed outside, O’Riordan recalls. Their conversation on the ship’s bridge was interrupted when “an almighty wave shook the ship” and he retreated to his cabin to find his wife injured.
He set out to find out more about her and, in that search, came across a framed copy of the interview I wrote for this paper all those years ago. It still hangs in O’Sullivan’s bar in Crookhaven.
By a strange coincidence, a friend was travelling in the area just last week and sent me a photo of the framed article. Mary Harper was in the ether.
And, thanks to Brian O’Riordan, we now know what happened next.
She stayed in Crookhaven for a week where she happily acted as guest of honour during the regatta taking place at the time. After that, she set off again, sailing around the south coast of Ireland, up the Irish Sea, through the Caledonian canal in Scotland and across the North Sea to Sweden. There, she met friends and together they sailed back to Nova Scotia.
Her boat had been damaged on rocks around Sweden so she bought a new one, called it Kuan Yinn III and continued to sail until she was 88. She died, aged 92, on December 17, 2008.
When that date comes around, we might recall a woman whose singular achievement never made the records book because, as she put it herself: “I did not officially leave Newfoundland and I did not officially enter Ireland.”
That did not matter a jot to her; all she wanted to do was sail and feel like a free spirit as she took in the vast majesty of the ocean, the sky, and the rolling, unpolluted waves.
Her world record is still remembered, though. As Brian O’Riordan writes: “Mary Harper was an intrepid sailor. She has not entered the Guinness Book of Records because of a technicality, but her exploits must not be forgotten.”
Her indomitable spirit must not be forgotten either. I have often summoned it up to remind me of any number of things; that age is only a number; that anything is possible; that society might render older women invisible, but that does not diminish their power.
This week, news of Mary Harper’s continuing adventures also offered welcome balm at a time when the news cycle has been particularly bleak. It is hard, particularly now, to remember the strength and depth of the human spirit when it is under continuous assault.
Try as we might, it is a challenge to stay buoyant in an echo chamber that parses the impact of an ever-growing list of crises — the climate emergency, the spiralling cost of living, a chronic housing shortage, war in Ukraine, and political chaos in Britain and the North. Add to that, reports of the unspeakable grief facing those who lost loved ones in a Halloween crowd surge in Seoul and the victims of a pedestrian bridge collapse in India.
News outlets never pretended to be purveyors of good news — nor should they — but perhaps technology has amplified the myriad issues affecting people all around the world. Check in on the headlines on any one of your always-at-hand devices and, before you can say “doom-scroll”, you are down the rabbit hole of despair.
That is why every now and again, I withdraw for a moment to recall people such as Mary Harper and remember that the human spirit is a remarkably robust thing.
She was born in 1916 and lived through two world wars, an economic depression, indeed several, and health epidemics from polio and TB to Aids. As did everyone else living during that time. I don’t know what they did to keep the balance between light and shade, but it seems that we have lost our ability to find that balance.
Few of us will ever set out to cross the expanse of the Atlantic alone in a 30ft boat as Mary Harper did, but her ‘anything is possible’ attitude is a welcome reminder that we can chart a course through these very choppy waters.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
