Anyone who’s been in the Rory McCann fandom for long enough knows that he’s legendary for living on a boat. We’ve all seen photos of him on it. It’s a thing with him.
The earliest mention I have, so far, in my articles collection of Rory McCann owning a boat is from 2009 after he returned to Scotland from Iceland. I have a theory that if he was not into boats already before he filmed Beowulf and Grendel, he got bit by the bug while making that film. (If you watch it, you’ll see what I mean. There was a bit of sailing involved.)
I don’t know what kind of boat it was and he might not have been living on it. Sometime in 2014 or 2015 he told someone in an interview that he had the Hound’s swords on the wall above the front door in his house. House, not boat.
(A sailing aficionado has since informed me that people who live on boats often refer to them as houses. Still, would one have room to mount a sword above one’s door on a boat? Especially that one? Eh…)
But at some point he definitely had a sailboat. It may or may not have been his first one. I call it Blue Boat, and here’s a photo of it:
The eBay listing where he sold this boat is no longer live, but I believe that occurred in 2017.
His next boat I had long thought of as Wooden Boat and he was already working on that one by 2016, as I’ve seen in photographic evidence from that year. Thus:
The party line about Wooden Boat among fans seems to be that Rory had earned enough from Game of Thrones to finally buy a larger boat that he could actually stand up in without opening any hatches. I’ve seen the stats for this boat and, sure enough, he had exactly six and a half feet worth of vertical space inside it.
There was some question, in 2021, as to whether Rory had sold the boat. I used to have an explanation here as to why I do not think that’s the case, but it mentioned his boat’s name and recently, concerns have been raised that that might put him at risk. I think it’s more a risk of someone annoying him than of someone harming him, but the question becomes, “Why would you want people annoying him, either?” I don’t, of course, so eventually I saw the complainant’s point (and she was nice about it). So no more mentioning his boat’s name on this site. And he has since posted himself on Instagram sailing it so, there’s your answer.
Put it this way: there are six boats on the planet of the same make and model as his. People will buy and sell them. So if you hear something, don’t panic.
P.S. If you don’t know his boat’s name, weren’t around for when I mentioned it here, and contact me trying to find out what it is, you’ll be disappointed. Sorry.
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[Last updated: 30 June 2024]
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