With a building breeze promising livelier conditions later in the day, you might have expected the slipper, smaller craft to set the pace in the opening salvo of Class 0's delayed series of the Monday.com ICRA National Championships at Howth Yacht Club. But it was the comfortably proportioned First 50 Checkmate (Dave Cullen & Nigel Biggs) of the host club which put down the bullet marker in the initial race of four completed, though times were close - sometimes very close.
However, Brian Jones and family from the Royal Cork in Crosshaven with the J/122 Jelly Baby were clearly in the process of familiarising themselves with the mysterious waters of the Fingal coast, and after taking third in Race 1, they were never off the top three, carding a total of 3, 1,3,1 to total 8 points and have it overall by close of play to the 12 points from 2,5,1,4 of John Treanor's newer J Boat ValenTina (National YC).
Checkmate XX stayed in the hunt to finish the day on third OA with her opening win followed by 7,5,2, taking it on countback after tieing on 15 points with Pete Smyth's Sunfast 3600 Searcher (NYC & RIYC) which scored 5,2,2,6. As for Jelly Baby, she'd quite the day of it, as she won overall on ECHO too.