The hard work pays off<\/strong><\/p>\nNow it looks like a different boat. It is unrecognizable from the wreck that was hauled out of the water. It is a gleaming white cruiser named Aquarius. From the moment you come on board the beautifully and lovingly restored cruiser, it is obvious that Fergal is a man of outstanding skills. Fergal started work on the new cruiser in May 2016 and it is hard to believe that he managed to fully restore and launch it in just 12 months. Even a heart attack which he had in February wasn\u2019t going to set him back. Aquarius is now moored at the Lakeside Marina in Athlone. Fergal has another incentive for keeping the cruiser here, his other boat sank on Lough Ree 2 years ago and he hasn\u2019t found it yet. \u201cI got caught in a really bad hail storm and I\u2019d no sight of lan, the GPS was down so I\u2019ve no idea where on Lough Ree it is. I\u2019ve had divers down a couple of times. We\u2019ve found 17 boats so far. The local Athlone Sub Aqua team go out and dive for me. I have a little camera I throw over the side and I drop it down to have a look. All the boats look the same under the water. Just a big pointy shape so it\u2019s hard to distinguish even between a 15ft boat and a 30ft boat.\u201d After all of this hard work, Fergal, Lyn, Max and Kyle are now reaping the rewards. They now spend their weekends on the boat and have even attended some IWAI Athlone Branch CIC\u2019s. As far as Fergal is concerned, this is only the beginning, he now plans to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labour, although the word on the river is that he is already eyeing \u00a0up his next project!!! Stay tuned, this won\u2019t be the last we hear of Fergal Butler and his projects! If you see Aquarius pass you on the river, be sure to give the Butler family a big wave as you now know how much \u00a0work it took for them to be here enjoying the River Shannon.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
First published in the Shannon Boat Rally Programme 2017<\/p>\n
Written by Oona Herraghty and Fergal Butler<\/p>\n
* Since the launch of Aquarias, we are delighted to tell you that Fergal and his family have joined us at several Athlone Branch Cruise n\u2019 Companys during the summer, we are looking forward to seeing them again in the new season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Dream… Skerries man, Fergal Butler is a remarkable man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":2783,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/branch.iwai.ie\/athlone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}