What do former round Ireland trophy winners do when they don’t have time to do the race itself? Former regular in the Round Ireland fleet Dave Nixon of Howth tells us the best thing to do is sail a 109–year–old gaff sloop for a day or two in the opposite direction. He and Nick Massey set out on Tuesday to sail the 1907-built Howth 17 Deilginis to Ardglass in the first stage of a passage to Bangor, where Deilginis is joining six of her classmates (the others have been road-trailed there) with other classics such as the Strangford Lough Glens to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club for the next four days.
They’d a fine fair wind for the 60 miles passage to Ardglass, knocking it off in nine hours - the Howth 17s are no slouches with sheets freed. Then yesterday lunchtime with spinnaker set, they were closing in on the South Rock Light to take the new ebb northward to Bangor when clubmate Dave Cullen’s Euro Car Park appeared and tacked close head as she plugged southward in the Volvo Round Ireland race.
The message from Deiliginis’s crew is that those guys are gong to wrong way. Euro Car Parks is still strugging to get to Wickow this morning, but despite having no engine, Deilginis was comfortably into Bangor Marina yesterday evening, and is all geared up to race acres Belfast Lough to Carrickfergus today to celebrate the class’s connection with legendary boatbuider John Hilidtch of that port, who built the first five Howth 17s in 1898.
