Marishka was very much a product of the Clyde estuary. Based on a Loch Fyne-type cutter – essentially a beamy double ender with a straight stem, and steeply raked stern post with the rudder hanging off it – she was designed by David Fyfe of Great Cumbrae and built by Morris & Lorimer at Sandbank on the Holy Loch in 1895. Her first owner was Noel ‘Pa’ Guinness, a Dublin solicitor and a resident of Howth who was related to the brewing family of the same name, and with an interest in the small merchant bank of Guinness Mahon. For a few years he had owned a smaller cutter called Constance, and over the next couple of years he commissioned two new new boats: a Water Wag built by J Atkinson at Bullock; and Tina, one of the first Howth 17s produced by Hilditch at Carrickfergus. In the same year that he took delivery of Marishka he co-founded Howth Sailing (now Yacht) Club of which he would subsequently become Commodore from 1948 to 1960, the last 12 years of his life.
Guinness was a keen racer, winning 10 prizes from 15 starts in his Water Wag in 1897, for instance, and 11 prizes from 16 starts in in 1900. He also at Bray, Howth (where in one race in 1898, according to The Yachtsman, “the wind was very light, eventually falling away altogether… , not getting a single fluke, gave up”) and Kingstown (where she came second in an 1898 race during which “a strong SW breeze, which brought up a heavy sea in the bay, and gave the small craft a dusting before they finished their matches”). But he also cruised her extensively, typically going to the west coast of Scotland for a month-or-so each summer with a paid hand or a friend.
