Two brothers rowing a 19-ft boat from Donegal to Limerick arrived at voyage’s end last Saturday a full week ahead of schedule.
Mike(43) and Martin(33) O’Boyle, from Mountcharles, set off last Sunday fortnight on 371 arduous kilometres through much of the length of Ireland from the Erne Estuary at Ballyshannon to Limerick via the Shannon-Erne waterway which links the two rivers..
Their retired boatbuilder father Michael, who worked on construction of the Jeanie Johnston, built the river row-boat to pass the time.
The brothers, who are more used to boating at sea, decided to take the new vessel on its maiden voyage and are claiming to be the first rowers to have made their way down the Erne and Shannon in one go.
Their voyage through rivers, canals and lakes in 13 counties has raised more than €20,000 for Irish hospices.
They had not expected to reach Limerick before next Sunday, rowing for about four hours each day.
But they found they were capable of rowing for up to 11 or 12 successive hours, doubling their daily target to around 34 kilometres.
They arrived on Saturday afternoon at the jetty near Jury’s Inn in Limerick and were acclaimed by dozens of friends and supporters who made a special trip from Donegal.
The brothers spent three months in intensive training to ensure their fitness for the challenge.
Martin said: “It was going so well that we just kept the heads down and pushed on. We weren’t expecting to do it as quick. We thought it would be a wee bit tougher on the body.”
He added: “We have figured we did over 100,000 pulls on the oars by the time we got to Limerick.”
Details of the adventure, which was videoed by their film-maker pal Aidan Haughey can be seen on www.headland.ie

Reporter: Paddy Clancy