Ahoy there! We’re about to set sail on an adventure across Dublin Bay on the St Bridget, with what’s arguably the most glamorous crew any boat has ever seen.

For keeping everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion are the Garrihy sisters Ailbhe and Aoibhín, on board to launch a very special initiative in the family business.

Their other sister Doireann, who recently announced she is expecting her first child, is busy with her 2FM job but the others are here to support parents Eugene and Clare with their latest project for their company Dublin Bay Cruises.

For the St Bridget is about to make her first voyage fully powered by a fuel that’s made from vegetable oil, the first ship in Ireland to make the change to plant power.

The company began in 2013 and Ailbhe, who works full-time in the family firm, is very proud of the switch they have made to help the environment.

‘What we have noticed over the years is we get a lot of corporate companies and enquiries, and with that comes the question, “can we see your sustainability statement?”’ she says.

‘For the last number of years we were thinking about what we were doing for the environment and we took some steps like having no plastic on board, no singleuse cups and things like that, but we knew we needed to do something more.

‘So during the winter we took the vessel out of the water, we took the two engines out and we completely remanufactured them and now we are no longer burning diesel.

We have moved to hydrotreated vegetable oil.’ HVO is a sustainable, renewable biofuel that reduces emissions by up to 90 per cent, significantly exceeding the EU and Ireland’s climate targets.

The St Bridget – named after Eugene’s mother – has undergone a major refurbishment to support this change, including the remanufacture of its engines to make them more fuel-efficient while dramatically reducing waste, a textbook example of Ireland’s Circular Economy policy in action.

Rather than constructing a new ship, Dublin Bay Cruises chose to upgrade its current vessel and the interior of the St Bridget has been redesigned by award-winning interior specialist Ciara Petty Design Studio. ‘You fill the boat as you would with diesel,’ says Ailbhe, who is looking ready for life on the ocean waves in a navy blazer, crisp T-shirt and shorts, taking her role as spokesperson seriously.

‘HVO is an expensive fuel to be using but this has been fully funded by ourselves and we are really proud of that. We are sailing as we always do but our emissions will be reduced. My parents come from entrepreneurial backgrounds and they have always run their own businesses.

‘I lived in Australia for a number of years and then I came home and worked in PR and marketing for a while, and I guess they needed one of us to come on board full-time and I was delighted to do it. I haven’t looked back since. We have our arguments but generally we get on very well. It’s great to work with your parents.’ As parents go, Clare and Eugene are quite the couple.

They are 40 years married this year and as the St Bridget sets sail, it’s easy to see where the glamorous Garrihys get their good looks from. Both come from Co Clare, where Aoibhín now lives, and they say their lives have always been driven by a passion for the sea and sustainability.

‘Eugene’s family were originally from a fishing background and then they changed with a diversification grant from fishing to tourism,’ says Clare.

‘I’m from Bell Harbour, Eugene is from Doolin, and we moved in the 1980s to Dublin, where the three girls were born. ‘Aoibhín has gone back – she met a Clare man and fell in love with him. Ailbhe met a Clare man as well but thankfully she managed to bring him to Dublin.’

Clare is from a farming business but her father was also the famous traditional musician Chris Droney, which is where she reckons her girls got their love of performing. She says she never really worried about Aoibhín or Doireann when fame hit.

‘They’re very, very wellgrounded,’ Clare says. ‘I suppose people say to me, where did they get it from? My father was a great traditional Irish musician, he was all-Ireland champion in the concertina. And Eugene’s dad was a great storyteller, a great character. I suppose what’s handed down can’t be handed back.

They love to perform but they’ve got business heads as well and they have great business ethic all three of them, which is probably what we’re most proud of.

‘Every opportunity that has even half-presented itself to them, they grasped it. They were never afraid to get outside their comfort zone, and I think that’s something they got from Eugene as well. He’s a projects man – he’s only happy once he has a project on the go. ‘One thing I worry about is what his next project is going to be? Because if he doesn’t have one, it’s not good,’ she laughs.

‘The girls are the same, they’re all the time pushing and exploring new ideas and new opportunities.’ Since setting up Dublin Bay Cruises, the couple have been passionate about the environment around them as their boat trip business brings tourists from home and abroad to see a side of the capital city that’s normally hidden from our view. ‘We are blessed with five grandchildren and number six on the way,’ says Clare.

‘Being the bright little dotíns that they are, they will soon be asking Eugene and myself, “what do you do to help the environment?” And we will be very happy to say we invested a lot of money in changing from diesel to HVO and reducing our emissions.’

As we sail out of Dublin and into the bay, it’s no wonder the Garrihys want to do their best to protect what is around them. Dublin is the only city in the world to have been given Unesco Biosphere status and even as we travel through the docks, past the famous Poolbeg towers, industry and nature are side by side.

It's not hard to see why a sailor's life might be so attractive, especially to an office-based landlubber, chained to the desk nine-to-five but Aoibhín assures us it's not always like this. The 2013 launch was held in pelting hail and the celebratory balloons almost took off in the wind.

However, Eugene Garrihy is definitely a man who could find rainbows in even the most bleak situation. As we sail under the Tom Clarke Bridge, the affable Clare man reveals he worked on the build when he first came to Dublin.

'Crazy,' he says. 'Around 45 years ago. I did an ANCO course and I was a fully qualified carpenter - and I was a very good carpenter. Then I started the construction business in Dublin.'

He had his business for 30 years and also went back into the ferry business in Doolin with his brothers, organising cruises under the Cliffs of Moher before seeing an opportunity to do the same in Dublin.

There's something about the sea that draws Eugene in, he says, and he wants to protect it. 'I don't know what it is, but unless I'm near the water every day, I think I'm not myself.

'Now, I haven't analysed this. I haven't got any professor to do that, but I find myself, even when we go abroad on holidays, it has to be near the water.

Eugene is quite the character - I wonder what it's like to have famous daughters and not be famous yourself, given I've met the girls before. 'That's like telling me, "I know all the notes and I sang all the words but I never quite learned the song",' laughs Eugene. 'If you go into a pub in Castleknock, you'll find that I am the most well-known member of the family. It all depends on where you're looking - they're not known in there.'

But on a more serious note, he is incredibly proud of what his daughters have achieved in their lives so far. 'I don't know about how you measure your success,' Eugene says thoughtfully. 'One thing I do know is that they work extremely hard. Now that's kind of a disease and infliction that was handed down to them from Clare and myself, and before that, our parents and their parents before them. It was always about getting up, going to work.

'There's an old woman in Doolin who was a postmistress with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She had one simple policy: Be at your place and work and be on time. So that was just kind of a disease we have.'

The move to HVO was a costly one for the firm but with the newly refitted St Bridget setting sail now, Eugene is glad that Dublin Bay Cruises has set the standard