Joseph Ferry

Reprinted with permission from the Tuesday, July 18, 2006,

By Declan Magee

A Philadelphia man has completed a single-handed journey across the Atlantic and landed in his father's birth place of Falcarragh.

Fifty-nine-year old Joseph Ferry set off from Cape May, New Jersey, on May 24 in the 32 ft. sailing sloop, named 'Falcarragh'. (Visit his Web site.)

The Falcarragh arrived in the Donegal town it was named after shortly before noon yesterday where a crowd of local people gathered on the pier to meet the son of the town who had completed the epic journey.

Still ecstatic at the experience of achieving the goal he had aimed at for several years, Joe said he felt great to be in Falcarragh.

"I have just arrived in Falcarragh and there is a reception of local people here to meet me and it is just great to be here at last. Mickey Feeney and Tommy McGinley, two Inisboffin fishermen, just guided me in across Ballyness Bay to Falcarragh. Out of the whole journey that was the most tricky bit coming in over the bank through Ballyness Bay.

"The journey was long and hard and I missed my family but I am standing here now on hard ground at my father's birthplace and that means the trip was successful. It is great to be here."

The arrival in Falcarragh yesterday made it third time lucky for Joe as two previous attempts to across the Atlantic in 2004 and 2005 were not completed.

For the third attempt Joe plotted a new route across the Atlantic which saw him make a short stop for fuel and supplies in the Azores.

Joe's father and his aunt arrived in Philadelphia in 1929 and his father is buried in St. Mary's Cemetery, Cape May, New Jersey, where his father is buried.

"When they bought that graveyard plot years ago, dad said 'This is a close as I can get to Ireland, so it will be a good place to put me down'."

The journey completes four years of preparation for Ferry who has retained links with his father's homeland.

His father was born on a farm outside Falcarragh and Joe himself lived on a farm in the Derryveagh Mountains for a time with his family and also lived on Inishboffin, in Tory Sound, with the island's salmon fishermen.

"This Atlantic salt flows in my veins, it is the soup in which my kin's lives have stirred. By no means is my intended trip meant to conquer anything, discover any unknown, test any mettle. I'd just like to spend some time on the waters between here and then, and maybe close a circle that was opened seventy-five years ago with my father's migration," Joe said before he departed on the trip.

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