Gilbert Louis (IRL141) from Howth Yacht Club competed at the IOM Mortelecque Trophy regatta in Valenciennes the weekend of the 12th & 13th September and reports here for Afloat.ie
Gilbert joined his brother in France and together made the trip up to Valenciennes arriving after just over 2 hour car journey to a typical French breakfast welcome… Et oui! A coffee with a croissant… hmmmm nice!
Very quickly it was time to rig up the boats, confirm the registration and boat cert before we were out for the first race. It was very well organised.
21 boat which is about the max IOM can realistically sail together. Anything above this and the fleet is broken down into 2 fleets with 4 boats moving each way (top 4 boats from B fleet progressing to A and last 4 of the A fleet going down to B fleet for the next race). This provided for some well disputed starts. And Starts were key to the end result as the top weather mark was not that far.
The IOM class only allows 3 rigs to cover winds up to 30-35 knots. Here there was no question on the choice of rig. Despite a forecast for 11-21 knots we had 6-10 knots max all day, so top rig it was for everyone.
Gilbert races a Goth XP IOM boat designed by Frank Russell Design from Australia, built in wood by our national Irish master-craftsman Neill Suitor from our Northern Ireland fleet. Gilbert was the only wooden boat racing there.
Gilbert found the pace early one with 3 5th place for the first 3 races establishing him in 3rd place after 3 race. But then as the wind got even lighter Gilbert found difficult to find the same pace. Whilst he manage to get in the top 3 a number of time he didn’t manage to finish better then 5th.
After day 1 and 11 races completed Gilbert found himself in 8th place out of 21 boats.
Day 2 was pretty much the same wind but this time coming 180 degree from the Saturday. But as light if not lighter at times. Once again Gilbert didn’t break the top 5 despite once again sail in the top 3 even leading some of the races at times. This was frustrating! His boat was outpointing pretty much everyone else but Gilbert was looking to find speed not pointing and despite making tuning changes between each race only found some marginal speed improvements.
Nonetheless this was a really good experience to gain as Gilbert knows what he needs to work on. A new main with the max draft in different location, a bigger rudder is on the works to try next. And this is part of the tuning when you sail a new design boat. This is part of the fun too!
At the end of day 2 Gilbert had progressed and built a nice gap in 6th place overall. The event was won by Guillaume Florent (Bronze Olympic medallist in Finn class).
Howth Yacht Club's Gilbert Louis Competes At Model Yacht IOM Mortelecque Trophy Regatta
About The Author
Afloat.ie Team
Afloat.ie is Ireland's dedicated marine journalism team.
Have you got a story for our reporters? Email us here.
We've got a favour to ask
More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.
Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.
So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.