User:Gwendolen Maguire/sandbox

= Gwendolen Maguire[edit] = Gwendolen Maguire was born on February 6 1993, the only child to Rory and Fiona Maguire (née Flynn). She was named after her Welsh maternal grandmother and grew up in Ballysadare, a small town near Sligo, Ireland.

Early life[edit]
Her mother worked in admin at the Sligo county council. She had been a smoker all her life and died from lung cancer when Gwen was 10. Her father was an electrician, now retired.

Gwen lived with her dad in a bungalow in the village. They had a fractious relationship with both unable to communicate their feelings in the aftermath of Fiona’s death. Looking back Gwen would acknowledge her father was at a complete loss as to how to parent a grieving and volatile teenage girl. Her father would take her sailing as a young girl. Being on the water together was one of the few times they enjoyed each other’s company. Gwen became a skilled sailor and as a teenager would go on regular sailing excursions alone.

She ran away from home twice and skipped many days at school, meeting up with an older group of kids to drink and smoke in the fields. One Christmas one of the group was killed, driving a stolen car into a tree when drunk.

Career[edit]
Gwen chose NYU as her university of choice just because it was far away but she failed to get the required grades. She moved to Dublin at 18 and did a variety of bar work. Within the year she had moved to London but came back to Dublin after 6 weeks as she hated the crowds and noise. She continued with bar work, mixing it with being a photographer’s assistant, working on a construction site and assisting mentally disabled children. During this time, the relationship with her father improved but they are not close.

Sailing[edit]
She rediscovered her love of sailing at 21 when she went on a sailing day with the mentally disabled children. She sought out more experience in larger crews. She became obsessed with fitness, running everyday, and quit smoking. She completed her first ironman at 23.

At 24 she became assistant manager in a Dublin city centre bar. She stopped drinking altogether but still worked at the bar, saving money to afford longer solo sailing trips away and building up distances. Her manager allowed her two summers off to sail and she circumnavigated the British Isles at 26. With savings, credit cards and a donation from her dad, she bought a £40K 27ft second hand yacht to sail the Atlantic, a challenge she set herself to complete before her 28th birthday.

Personal life[edit]
She blogs as girlonayacht and has 10K followers on Instagram. She is currently single.