Drop the anchor, sale awaits

HOPEFULLY it isn’t ominous – but the dining room lightshade hanging over the table at yacht designer Rob Doyle’s design-savvy home is a design called Titanic. On the plus side, the sleek, long light has been in place for quite a few years, unlike that fateful ship.

Naval architect Doyle is one of the key personnel with Ron Holland Design – one of the world’s top yacht and boat designers, who’s been working from a Kinsale base for decades, pioneering craft from under 50 feet to over 200 feet, and to over €50 million in value. Their latest boat, the 190-foot Ethereal, for internet guru Bill Joy, is reckoned to be the most technologically advanced, energy efficient and first carbon-neutral SuperYacht in the world.

Houses, in contrast, are a piece of pie. Rob Doyle, with his wife Emma Duane, came across Farm Cottage, at Acres by Ringone, just upriver of Kinsale, about eight years ago, and have transformed what was a traditional dwelling into a far larger, and more interesting and comfortable, family home, on a sublime one-third of an acre site. Since they started work on the rural, valley-set country house with contemporary twists, they’ve been joined by three-year old son Beau, and now seven-month old Rio.