Whoever sold their soul for the weather, it was worth it. Three days of consistent sunshine and sailing breeze is nearly unheard of on Dublin Bay, but by whatever means, the Liebherr ICRA Cruiser Nationals went off without a hitch.
Day three concluded with winds of 10 knots and flat seas providing exciting and tight racing. After the first race was sailed today the fleets swapped courses and sailed on their alternative course for the second race adding variety and spice to the racing.
Dominating proceedings from before the start gun with a win in the feeder race from Cork, Anthony O’Leary in Antix on 9.5 pts took the Class 0 IRC title by the slimmest of margins. Despite stringing together five winds in a row at the start, just a single point separated them from Dave Dwyer’s Marinerscove.ie in the end, when Mariners finished with 10.5 pts. Marinerscove, sailed by Nicholas O’Leary, had two bullets on the final day, the lighter airs suiting the Mills 39 over the Ker, and with Antix yielding 40 seconds in the hour. In the strong tides and light winds Antix secured second and third today. Peter Rutter’s Quokka 8, a British Commodore’s Cup Team member, had a third and second today but was very consistent throughout the event and was able to discard a 6th and this cemented his third place on 16 points.
On the whole there were no major surprises in the IRC results with just a couple of changes in placings, with a notable exception in Division One IRC, with the emergence of Tony Fox’s A35 Gringo to take second place. Gringo, who was lying in sixth place yesterday, today scored two seconds and with a discard of 19 this was enough to bring him to second place. The winner, Rockabill, sailed by Mel Collins, had five firsts and a second in the series in what was possibly, with 29 boats, the most competitive of the classes. The best of the J109s, Joker 2, was third.
In Class Two an interesting fact is that Corby 25s took places one, two and three. The pre-race favourites the Colwell/Murphy Kinetic, took the trophy from two Cork boats, Denis Coleman in Thunderbird second and Vinny O’Shea in Yanks and ffrancs third.
In Class Three Flor O’Driscoll in Hard on Port lost his crown to the Faroux Quarter tonner Tiger of Joxer O’Brien and the Kenefick father-and-son pairing followed in third place by the quarter tonner Supernova from the Royal Irish Yacht Club.
The non-spinnaker Division 5 sailed only five races for the series and Vincent Farrell in Tsunami took the crown here followed by Philip Dilworth in Orna and Liam Coyne in Lula Belle.
Non spinnaker Division 6 was won by Joe Carlton in Voyager, followed by Peter Dunlop from Wales in Mojito with Howth Yacht Club Brazen Hussy of J.Barry and M. Stirling in third place.
All in all it was an excellent series with strong competition in all fleets and will be a hard act to follow for the hosts of 2011, the Royal Cork Yacht Club.
