A Brief History of Longboat Rowing

The Celtic Longboat is a 4 person coxed rowing boat used for racing, training and recreation. Racing this type of boat has a long and interesting history on the West Wales coast.

Since the 1970's local coastal villages have put up teams to compete in the traditional 'pulling races'. The longboats started in 1978 when Tom Sutton and his friends from St David’s, patched up an old Irish Curragh that they had found on Ramsey Island and entered the boat in the local Solva Traditional Boat Rowing Race and came second. They then made the same shape in fiberglass and it proved even faster. The first Pembrokeshire Longboat in fiberglass was made in 1979 - they entered the Solva race again and won easily but were told not to come back as fiberglass boats were not wanted in that race. Soon interest in the new boat was growing - they made a couple more for locals and held races around Ramsey Island. From this developed the Pembrokeshire Longboat League.

The Welsh Longboat League Cymru was formed to try and standardise the boats, rules etc. and bring together the boats from all areas. At this time every boat varied in weight and finish. Several companies were approached to submit proposals to design and build a the new boat, the brief was simple, the boat should be faster than the best of the existing boats, and at least as sea worthy and all should be identical. After much deliberation and debate Dale Sailing from Neyland were selected as the new builder in 1999 and to date the over 35 boats have been built. The new boats have caused a resurgence of interest in racing as now everyone is able to compete on level terms in the new one design Celtic Longboat.

These new boats race around the potentially treacherous coastline of West Wales and even race across the Irish Sea and are still some of the fastest at 'the Great River Race' in London.