London and Rio Olympic 49er crew Matt McGovern is moving to the position of helmsman in a new campaign for Tokyo 2020. Ballyholme Yacht Club (BYC) say the Belfast Lough star, who split from sailing partner Ryan Seaton at the end of last season, will now sail with former top Northern Ireland youth sailing performer Robbie Gilmore.

It's yet another skiff team for Ireland that could now see as many as four campaigns contest the single Tokyo slot. Afloat.ie reported earlier on the burgeoning Irish 49er scene here.

Carrickfergus Sailing Club's Seaton, also sailing with another top Irish youth sailor, Cork Harbour's Seafra Guilfoyle, has already declared that a Gold Medal in Tokyo is the target for their new north–south campaign. Seaton and Guilfoyle intend to make Mallorca this Spring their first event and have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the €5k to get them there.

Meanwhile, McGovern, who has swapped his crew position for the helm in the 49er and teamed up with the 2013 ISA Youth Champion Robbie Gilmore of Strangford Lough Yacht Club, is working hard, hitting the water six days a week to get the new NI campaign up to international speed.

#49er - More than €5,000 is the cost of competition for Ryan Seaton and Seafra Guilfoyle as they prep for their first event as a duo in Mallorca this coming spring.

The new combination have joined with PledgeSports to crowdfund the necessary budget for a new 49er skiff plus flights, accommodation and ferries as they ready for their debut competition event in the Balearic Islands.

Ahead of that, they will be training with other Olympic hopeful teams and coaches in Cadiz and Mallorca in preparation for a season that builds on a tremendously successful 2016 for Irish high performance sailing.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, last month double Olympian Seaton teamed up with 20-year-old Royal Cork prospect Guilfoyle, making his comeback from an injury that ruled him out of last summer’s Olympics, with ambitions to represent Ireland in the skiff class at Tokyo 2020.

But they will face strong competition for that spot, not least from Seaton’s former partner and fellow Belfast sailor Matt McGovern, with whom he finished in the top 10 in Rio, who is also currently looking for a new skiff partner.

More on the €5,350 Seaton and Guilfoyle are looking to raise can be found on the PledgeSports website HERE.

Royal Cork dinghy sailor Seafra Guilfoyle (20) will team up with Belfast double Olympian Ryan Seaton for a Tokyo 2020 Olympic 49er campaign.

The move brings the curtain down on an eight year campaign by Seaton who split from crew Matt McGovern after Rio. Seaton had been trialling a number of crew replacements since Rio, as earlier reported by Afloat.ie. 

McGovern, also from Belfast, is in talks to find a new sailing partner as he intends to continue for Tokyo too.  

According to Royal Cork Yacht Club, Seaton and Guilfoyle will make a formal announcement of the campaign in Crosshaven this Friday. The duo will be looking to build on the Rio top ten finish.

Guilfoyle, an ISAF youth silver medalist in the Laser Radial from 2014, withdrew from the 2016 Mens Laser trial with a back injury.

As Afloat.ie reported in Ireland may field as many as four Olympic 49er campaigns for Tokyo. Read our 49er profile here.

Is it a bird, is it a plane? The International 49er Skiff is twenty years old in 2016, and it has been part of the Olympics since 2000. Yet for most sailors it is still as modern and bewildering as the day after tomorrow. W M Nixon tries to make sense of a class which finds itself in a good place in Ireland at the moment.

It doesn’t do to think too hard about the slim 16ft 49er skiff. Almost immediately you’ll jump to the conclusion that it’s actually a trimaran which is still awaiting the fitting of its floats. And then, when you see them zooming along at full speed with all three sails pulling in perfect unison and the crew of two exactly horizontal and cool as you please on their trapezes, you can’t help but think that it’s all too good to be true, for what they’re doing is equivalent to balancing – indeed ballet dancing - on the head of a pin, and the slightest error will lead to a sudden and almighty mess.

The 49er ideal – perfect balance, minimal spray, maximum speed

The 49er still looks more modern than the day after tomorrow
In thinking that, you’d be absolutely right. When everything is in the right place and functioning smoothly, the 49er is an impressive sailing machine. But when she goes head over heels or whatever you want to call it (the word “capsize” is much too tame), everything seems to get fouled up with everything else, and unravelling it all can take for ever.

There’s one particular trick of the 49er which sums up the challenge of sailing these very special Olympic boats. The hulls are just slips of things, with only the minimum of buoyancy needed to get them up to speed, and then as the speed confers extra buoyancy, you’re in business. But in that crucial moment as you break out the assymetric in a proper breeze before working speed develops, you might just see the bow dipping a little, then the nose goes that tiny bit under water, and things go from bad to worse in an instant. You’re going down the mine. And a very deep mine it can be too.

So you might wonder why the 49er is ringing a bell in Ireland at the moment. It’s clearly a specialist interest, and there’s no denying that those who can make a good fist of sailing it are an elite. Furthermore, it really only makes real sense when seen as an Olympic class, which makes it about as different as possible from the trusty old Laser at the bottom of the garden, the only boat to succeed in being an Olympic class while continuing to be universally popular with a huge variety of users at the same time.

Thus the 49er and its adherents are in a sort of parallel universe which only actively intersects in three ways with the rest of us. The main one is when the buildup to the Olympics and the Olympics themselves are topping the headlines, and the other two are when there’s a major global championship involving the 49er, possibly at a nearby venue, while the third is when the special group of 49er trainees under the ISA Performance Scheme are in Ireland on one off their fortnight-long training camps, as is happening at the moment at the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire.

Ireland’s core 49er Training Squad in action in Dublin Bay this week – in foreground are Sean and Tadgh Donnelly, beyond are Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove, and Oisin O’Driscoll and Mark Hassett. Photo: Afloat.ie

A word with the coach – Schull’s Oisin O’Driscoll and Mark Hassett with Tytus Konarzewski. Photo: Afloat.ie

It’s unusual, as many of the training camps have tended in recent years to be based during our winter at Cadiz in southern Spain. But don’t go along to the National YC this weekend expecting to see an array of 49ers. For a start, training sessions are a rather private affair. But as it is, we’re talking specialist numbers in dedicated highly-trained small groups, and to best understand that, a quick canter through the history of the 49er helps.

The modern skiff emerged from the legendary Sydney Harbour 18 footers which raced for impressive money prizes on that wonderful stretch of city-surrounded water, the racing closely followed by big harbour ferries crowded out with spectators betting like crazy on the results. In the early days, the quest for speed was met by crowding on ever more sail and somehow fitting aboard ever more crewmen to hang out as best they could – sometimes on each others shoulders – to keep the whole show on the road. And if they happened to capsize in a harbour whose waters might include a man-eating shark or two, not to worry – by this stage the sail areas had become so enormous it was reckoned the vast spread of white cloth on the surface of the sea would frighten away even the hungriest shark.

When power and weight mattered – a well-crewed Sydney Harbour 18-footer in all her glory. As designers learned that less is more, the leaner skiff concept emerged.

The rest of the world had just become used to these mad Sydney sailors using colossal sail area and moveable human ballast to achieve speed when the Aussies with innovative geniuses like Frank Bethwaite started to go the other way. The boats were still 18ft long. But with trampoline-like wings either side and a smaller crew hung out on trapezes, better speeds could be obtained with much less fuss. The Sydney Harbour 18ft skiff was re-defined, and with the 2000 Olympics scheduled for Sydney, the idea that a modern purpose-developed skiff would make an ideal Olympic sailing boat gained traction.

Or at least that’s how it all looks in hindsight. Doubtless there are as many narrative versions of how it all really came about as there were skiff types which showed up for an official Olympic Skiff selection trial on Lake Garda in 1996. What we do know is that the 49er skiff, designed by Julian Bethwaite of Australia and built by Dave Ovington in the northeast of England, emerged head and shoulders above everything else. And unlike a much earlier time when selection trials for a three man Olympic keelboat somehow saw the Soling being selected despite the fact that the Etchells 22 was clearly the better boat, this time righteousness prevailed, and the 49er made her Olympic debut just four years later.

Julian Bethwaite, designer of the 49er

Dave Ovington, boat-building genius from Tyneside

That in itself was something of a miracle of productivity, as the 49er has settled down with just two main builders worldwide, Ovington in England and MacKay in New Zealand.

That things were a bit hectic with larger-than-life characters in the early days goes without saying, and Irish sailing kept intersecting with it in a tangential way. Thus Gerry Donleavy of Dun Laoghaire, whose notable sailing CV incudes the British & Irish Flying Fifteen titles, found himself in 1990 at the FF Worlds in Brisbane, Australia, and among the boats he was racing against was one crewed by Dave Ovington from Newcastle in the northeast of England. Dave was a noted builder of Flying Fifteens (for which Gerry was Irish agent) and other racing machines, with Ovington’s career given an early rocket-assisted start when he built an all-conquering Enterprise dinghy for a rising talent called Lawrie Smith.

There was a layday during those 1990 Brisbane FF Worlds, and the competitors were taken off on a river cruise which included watching the local skiffs racing. Ovington was completely hooked by the whole skiff concept. He soon linked up with the formidable brains of the Bethwaite family to work towards production, but as Julian Bethwaite – son of the legendary Frank - is a perfectionist and endless experimenter all in one, it reputedly took at least five years of trialling and testing before he was satisfied with what eventually became the aft end of the new 49er.

Nevertheless the new machine was ready enough for Lake Garda in 1996, and the rest is history. But so too alas is Dave Ovington. The production rate for his surprisingly small “factory” in North Shields on Tyneside close east of Newcastle was already prodigious, with a selection of superb racing craft, yet he and the other builders managed to meet most of the demand for 49ers for the 2000 Olympics, and things were in running order for the 2004 Games as well.

But the pace was literally killing. In 2005, while getting ready to go out for a family sail on Lake Windermere, Dave Ovington dropped dead with a heart attack. He was only fifty. His sudden departure brought home a realisation of all that he had done in creating a world focus of top quality racing boat building in the unlikely setting of Tyneside, using dedicated local labour – only around fifteen in all - which he trained to be among the most talented boat-makers in the world, despite the fact that many of them don’t sail.

Dave Ovington left quite a legacy, and the continuing success of Ovington Boats is tangible evidence of it, with the company run by a dedicated triumvirate of three executives. Gerry Donleavy says he never fails to be impressed by the good working atmosphere in a plant producing top-level boats on which an entire nation’s Olympic hopes will rest, and it’s the reassuring structure on which the 49er Class is based which has led to the ISA Performance Director James O’Callaghan making such a strong commitment to the class.

A long way from Schull. Mark Hassett and Oisin O’Driscoll in this week’s Dublin Bay 49er Training Camp. Photo: Afloat.ie

Sean Waddilove and Rob Dickson make up one of the ISA’s three core 49er crews. Photo: Afloat.ie

“We have to operate on a tight budget” says O’Callaghan, “and the 49er offers great value. It’s absolutely standardised, you just buy the boats and the parts and the sails off the shelf, and you know it’s a level playing field after that. With some other non-single-handed Olympic classes, there’s too much choice, too many builders involved. But with the 49er, the unknowns are taken out of the equation, and you can get on with planning and implementing a training programme relatively untroubled by boat issues”

In keeping it that way, the 49er Class worldwide has benefitted from Irish experience in running sailing organisations. Marcus Spillane (42) hails from Cork and a Crosshaven sailing background, but this past week he has been putting the final details into place in his new base in San Francisco after several gloriously busy years at the top end of some very exciting business ventures in New York. It’s said of running your own business that if you’re not having fun or making a lot of money, then why are you doing it? But Marcus Spillane seems to manage to do both, and he fits in quite a bit of sailing while he’s at it, having got involved with the Laser 2s in UCC both as sailor and then longer term as an administrator, through which he met Laser 2 designer Frank Bethwaite (who unlike Dave Ovington, lived to a lively 92) and his son Julian.

Marcus Spillane, President of the International 49er Class, has this week been confirmed as President of the International NACRA 17 Class.Spillane’s other sailing has included Fastnets and Round Irelands and a lot of Etchells 22s and other racing in America (he’ll be doing the Caribbean 600 next February in a Swan 66), but as well he somehow found the time to include the 49er, and has great memories of fun championships with the congenial ISA coach Rory Fitzpatrick as crew.

Yet even a couple of minutes of talking with Marcus Spillane will reveal that he has more useful ideas about how sailing generally and its specialist sectors can be properly run than a whole committee room full of blazers. So naturally he was soon drafted into the admin side of the 49er on a voluntary basis, he then became the class’s World CEO in addition to his multiple other activities in business and sport, and in 2012 he was elected President of the International 49er Association with colleague Ben Remocker of Canada as Class Manager.

By this time the 49ers had gone through a re-vamp to improve the value and boat appeal which James O’Callaghan – who had been appointed ISA Performance Director in 2006 – rates so highly. While the basic concept remained the same, it was agreed that there had been so many advances in sails, spars and rigs in sailing generally that in order to reinforce the 49er’s image as being cutting edge, the rig should be up-graded and the one design nature of the hull should be put beyond all question.

This was done in 2009, resulting in the 49er we see today, based on a hull from master-moulds made only by MacKay, but producing boats in the Northern Hemisphere with Ovington, and in the Southern with MacKay, under a production programme so tightly controlled that you could argue the modern 49er is the world’s first true one design.

Of course it’s still a minority interest as a boat to sail, even if what happens in the class afloat and in the training camps is increasingly a matter of pubic interest. At a major championship in North America they might expect to see 80 boats, if it’s a major international championship held in Europe (where the class’s ancestral home of Lake Garda is a popular venue) you can expect 120 boats.

Yet so much is at stake among those 120 boats in international terms that the efficient running of the class worldwide is vitally important, and for the past four years the Spillane/Remocker duo have been making such a good job of running the International 49er Association that as of Wednesday night this week they have also taken on the running of the new Olympic class, the 2011-designed NACRA 17 Catamaran, which with its mixed-gender two person crew made a successful debut at Rio, but found itself with a class administration no longer able to cope with demand.

That the NACRA 17’s future was placed in Marcus Spillane’s hands will tell you something of how highly the 49er Class Association president from Ireland is rated in the administration of international sailing, and he also finds time to represent Ireland at the top – he’ll be very effectively working the rooms on behalf of many interests at the World Sailing conference next month in Barcelona.

He does all this with such good humour and enthusiasm that it made learning more about the 49er a very entertaining chat rather than an earnest journalistic endeavour, so now we have some idea about what those guys are sailing as they buzz about Dublin Bay this weekend.

Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern in action. Following the 2016 Olympics, they will now provide the 49er Class with two crews, as McGovern has teamed up with a new sailing partner, and Seaton is currently testing three different potential crewmates.

For some years now, the 49er in Ireland was all about Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern from Belfast Lough, whose often lone pursuit of training competition and international championships was quietly heroic in itself, for with a different spin of the dice they might have been on the podium in 2012. Then they hit world headlines in 2016 by winning gold in Palma in April, and in Rio in August they had two race wins and were definitely contenders.

Also very much in the public eye were Andrea Brewster and Saskia Tidey of the RIYC in Dun Laoghaire, who made it into an Olympic 49er FX place at the last chance in February 2016, and then had the energies of top coach Tytus Konarzewski given over to them virtually full time in the buildup to Rio. The result was a more-than-respectable performance, and in all the intense Irish involvement in Olympic 49er campaigning was well justified.

This fitted very neatly with The Plan. It’s given all sorts of official titles, and reams of reports could be written about it, but basically since about 2014 James O’Callaghan has had three very promising young 49er crews in training, and they came on so well that by the end of 2014 they’d got to a stage he hadn’t expected to reach until early 2016, such that this week – albeit in a low key way – he is introducing a complete squad which will raise 49er sailing in Ireland, and for Ireland, to a new level.

This is in the knowledge that Matt McGovern has parted the ways with Ryan Seaton to set up a new 49er equipe with another crewmate, while Seaton is keen to stay in the game and he has three potential new partners in mind, though whether he’ll be testing any of them in the current programme in Dun Laoghaire remains to be seen.

Then there are the Nippers, Doug Elmes of Kilkenny and Colin O’Sullivan of Malahaide, the competent kids who took bronze in the 420 Youth Worlds in Malaysia at New Year, won the 420 Irish Opens during the summer going away, and then at the end of August suddenly appeared at their sailing base of Howth with their newly-acquired 49er, having leapt clean over any ideas of a 29ers or a 470 on the way.

The Nippers. Ex 420 stars Colin O’Sullivan (left, deep in midst of it all) and Doug Elmes (right) with their newly-acquired 49er in Howth at the end of August. Photo: W M Nixon

As for the 29ers, breeding ground for future 49er champs, the two Harrys – Durcan and Whittaker of Royal Cork – may be Ireland’s only active representatives, but they made a great job of it by winning the British Championship 2016, and now their sights are set on the 29er Worlds next year in California, but after that a 49er is surely the logical step.

Of course we’ve had waves of 49er interest in Ireland before – when it was new around 2000-2002, the class surged to maybe seven boats. What we’re looking at now is a comparable number, but there a depth to it that’s encouraging, and the three favoured young crews have been performing beyond expectation to provide a core for potential success well into the Olympic future.

The Main Man. Tytus Konarzewski is one of Europe’s most respected sailing coaches, and the Irish 49er training squad have the use of his services until the end of 2016. Photo: Afloat.ie

Thanks to the ISA’s Development and Youth Academies and Performance Pathways, and the quiet behind-the-scenes work by the Irish Sailing Foundation to add resources to funds coming from Sports Ireland, the work can go on. And although Tytus Konarzewski’s special talents were almost wholly devoted to coaching Andrea Brewster and Saskia Tidey in the six-month buildup to the Olympics, his contract runs to the end of 2016, and he’s now fulltime with the 49er crews, and there’ll be two more two-week training camps before the end of the year, both in Cadiz with one in November and the other in December.

Making the best of light breezes and lumpy seas in Dublin Bay. Rob Dickson and Sean Waddilove, with the Donnelly brothers beyond. Photo: Afloat.ie
The three crews marked for destiny are Oisin O’Driscoll from Schull and Mark Hassett from Baltimore, Sean and Tadgh Donnelly from Dun Laoghaire, and Robert Dickson from Howth with Sean Waddilove from Skerries. In this year of all years, Irish sailors have some idea of just how much is involved in a campaign towards the Olympics. We wish them well, these young people and their supports teams.

They say the truest good work is done by stealth, but we never thought to see it as clearcut as this…….The 49ers head into the sunset after making the most of an October evening. Their current training camp on Dublin Bay continues to the end of next week, and then training is resumed with another two week camp in Cadiz in November. Photo: Afloat.ie

Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern entered the medal race in the Men's 49er today, knowing that medals were out of their reach, but they were looking to cap a fine performance in the preliminary stages with a good medal race result. The New Zealander pairing had been already declared winners before the ultimate race had started, so the fight was for the minor placings. Statistically, only the 4th place Brits could improve into a medal position, leaving 5th to 10th positions to battle it out for bragging rights.

The New Zealand team, with no pressure on them sailed straight into the lead, and, as so often in the past, did not relinquish it until the finish to crown a great series, a great quad and to win the gold in considerable style.
Behind them the Irish gamble on the left side on the 2nd beat didn’t pay off but a British capsize at the bottom mark and some smart sailing up the beat, followed by a gybe set at the final windward mark saw the Irish boat recover to 6th, only to lose three places in the final approach to the finish.

So a 10th overall for Seaton and McGovern, a wonderful result that sets them up for the next four years. They will take great confidence forward, particularly with a series that included two 1sts a 2nd and a 4th.

Northern Ireland's Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern gave themselves a great medal race boost by winning the final race of their qualification series in the 49er class on Tuesday.  It was their second race win of the 12–race series. The Ballyholme Yacht Club pair are eighth overall on 103 points, some 33–points off the bronze medal position for today's race. Double points are at stake in today's medal race at 5pm (Irish time).

The best the Northern Irish pair can do is fifth overall as there are 33 points between themselves and third with only 20 points available. There are 23 points between fourth and eighth, but only 11 between fifth and eighth. The best possible result is to finish six places ahead of DEN, four ahead of FRA and three ahead of ARG.

In a week of high's for Irish sailing, their inclusion in today's climax is another major success for Irish Olympic sailing because – quite apart from Annalise's Olympic Silver medal performance and her fourth at London 2012 – if they can hold on to eighth it will be Ireland's only top eight finish overall since 1980. Seaton and McGovern finished 14th overall at their first Olympics in London four years ago having been in medal contention at the half way stage in Weymouth.

Overall, this means Rio represents Ireland's best ever Sailing Olympics by a long chalk.

Today, in the 49er class, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (NZL) have already won the gold medal, and did it with two races to spare after dominating the 20-boat fleet at Rio 2016 over the past week. The New Zealanders have gone undefeated in major competition in the 49er fleet since taking the silver medal at London 2012. They have won all four of the last World Championships and were expected to deliver gold for New Zealand this week. Even Burling and Tuke might be surprised at the ease with which they've managed their extraordinary feat, however.

Behind them the battle rages on for the other medals, with Erik Heil and Thomas Ploessel (GER) holding second place in front of the 2012 Olympic Champions Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen (AUS).

Ireland's Men's 49er Skiff Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern from Ballyholme Yacht Club in Northern Ireland are seventh overall after nine sailed races in Rio. Dun Laoghaire's Andrea Brewster and Saskia Tidey are 12th after nine races in their 20–boat 49erfx fleet. It was the most frustrating day so far of the Olympic sailing competition with the wind refusing to play fair on Guanabara Bay.

49er Skiff 

Perhaps inspired by French gold and bronze in the Windsurfing the previous day, Julien d'Ortoli and Noe Delpech fired their way up the rankings into fourth place after mastering the Copacabana course with two firsts and a third place. This puts the French just two points behind the third-placed Australians, reigning Olympic Champions Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen.

Meanwhile it's business as usual for the ever dominant Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (NZL) whose scores of 2,3,1 have opened up an 18-point lead over Erik Heil and Thomas Ploessel (GER). Even if the gold is beginning to get away from the Germans, they do at least have a healthy 15-point lead over the Aussies, with just three qualifying races remaining before the Medal Race.

Burling said, "We're pleased with three low scores, the boat was going really fast. We had some beautiful conditions for racing but got hit by a massive squall on the way in. It was maybe 45 or 50 knots.” Tuke added, "A south-west front came in and it went from 11 knots to more than 40 knots in the space of ten minutes.” Even the four-time World Champions capsized in the storm-force conditions. "We struggled to stay upright just with the mast up. Some massive waves out there, just happy to be back on shore,” said Burling, shivering and itching to get back to checking over the boat for any damage.

The Germans seemed to enjoy the mad ride in through the storm a little more than the Kiwis. "We ragged it quite fast on the way in,” said Heil. "But what lucky timing. Just after the last guy came across the finish line, the breeze came in 130 degrees from the other side, and with massive force. Even with just the mast up and no sails, we still needed to get on the trapeze to stop the boat tipping over. We have some boat work to do, we have damaged the sails, we have to check the mast.”

Noe Delpech was barely thinking about what a good day he'd had after getting ashore - just happy to be in one piece. "We had three good starts and are very happy with our speed and strategy today. But then there was the wind that arrived straight afterwards. We capsized many times. The mainsail went flying through the air and it fell in the water but our coach managed to save it before we lost it. We had a bad last hour on the water. The sails are not in great condition but I think we are OK mostly.”

Delpech was pleased to have closed in on the podium, but like all Olympic sailors never likes to get ahead of himself. "We are two points behind the bronze medal position, so yes, for sure we can start thinking about the options to get a medal, but we have still three important races to do tomorrow. We just go race by race.”

The Skiffs will have to work quickly with another three races scheduled for tomorrow which looks to be a busy day. The Laser, Laser Radial, Finn and Nacra 17 will all have their Medal Race due to the postponements from today.

Women's Skiff – 49erFX

Tamara Echegoyen and Berta Betanzos (ESP) fired two bullets from today's three races on the Niterói course moving the reigning World Champions to the top of the scoreboard. Behind them are two former World Champion crews, Alex Maloney and Molly Meech (NZL) who are four points behind the Spanish in second, and Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze (BRA) just one point behind the Kiwis in third overall.

Although previous overnight leaders Jena Hansen and Katja Salskov-Iversen (DEN) scored a second in the last race of the day their earlier scores of 9,16 have hurt the Danish team who are now fourth overall. However, the Danes are only nine points off the lead and there are still three more qualifying races scheduled for Tuesday before Thursday's Medal Race.

Echegoyen, the London 2012 Olympic Champion in match racing, commented, "We are very happy, we have sailed very well today. It was very important to be very open minded, to be able to adapt ourselves to what was happening. We were well prepared for today's three races, both in terms of understanding the conditions with our meteorologist and also regarding the tactics.

"In the two first races it was clear where to go, but the third one was really crazy and we just sailed with the wind shifts. It has been a good day, but also quite difficult, we have had to work a lot. These results give us the confidence to keep on going in this way. Now we are leading but we are all very close on points. Still three races and the Medal Race ahead, so we have to go step by step and keep on going.”

It's a sensational Saturday for Irish sailing after a stunning sixth scored in race nine, Annalise Murphy moves back up to second in the overall rankings in the Laser Radial Fleet. Annalise recovered well from the teens in a 12–knot race that featured a poor result for the former series leader Anne-Marie Rindom of Denmark who is now third, two points behind Annalise on 52 points. The overall leader is now Holland's Marit Boumeester on 45 points. Race ten, the final qualifying race before Monday's medal race, follows shortly.

In another massive result for the Irish sailing team today, the 49er mens skiff pair, Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern, of Ballyholme Yacht Club, have won the fourth race of the series and move into second overall. 

 

Producing a runaway lead following a second row start (scroll to timeline 2:46:00 on the video timeline below) in yesterday's Sailing World Cup medal race in Weymouth was a most impressive performance for Ireland's 49er pair Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern until an unfortunate course error robbed the Belfast Lough sailors of a coveted Sailing World Cup medal race win.

After hitting the left hand corner to produce at times a 100–metre lead they showed some explosive boat speed and great boat handling but after two laps they mistook the finish line (scroll to timeline 3:08:00) and 'got stuck in the moment', according to helmsman Ryan Seaton. 

Asked by media afterwards (scroll to timeline 3:14:00) who was responsible for navigation, crew Matt McGovern said: 'I think we all take a bit of responsibility; myself, Ryan and the coach'.

The Belfast pair recovered to finish seventh out of ten. It was a basic error they will want to forget but one better made now rather than in two months time in Rio.

Taking it in their stride and shrugging off the blunder, McGovern said he was not looking forward to the 'slagging' he was going to get when he got ashore. 

Having raced so well, it was a big shame for Team Ireland not to have sealed the rare win but taking the whole race in context, Seaton and McGovern's performance was undeniably an impressive one and a great confidence boost for Rio. 

A better day yesterday for Ireland’s Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern brought the 49er skiff duo into the top ten when they posted two sixth places for the day, boosting the Northern Ireland pair to ninth overall.

Unfortunately, Ireland’s sailors in the both 49erFX and Laser Radial classes had more disappointing results and they are in the back of their respective classes.

Andrea Brewster and Saskia Tidey stay 14 from 15. In the Laser Radial, Annalise Murphy lies 37 from 39. Howth Yacht Club's Aoife Hopkins moved up to 29th yesterday.

'Tight' and 'light' were the main descriptors used by sailors at Sailing World Cup Weymouth and Portland as challenging conditions continued across the London 2012 Olympic waters.

The light breeze ensured Friday's racing was challenging and tense across the fleets that were able to race in the morning. All fleets came ashore at 13:20 with only the Men's and Women's 470, 49er, Finn and Nacra 17 completing races in the morning session.

At 16:00, the 49erFX, Men's and Women's RS:X, Laser and Laser Radial fleets went out onto the water and all but the 49erFX got some racing in.

It's fair to say the day was a tough one for all of the 330 sailors from 43 nations racing across the ten Olympic fleets. Saturday's schedule sees 33 races on the agenda as the Race Committee look to catch up on lost races.

49er and 49erFX

Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign (GBR) thrived in the light breeze, snapping up a first and a second from two 49er races. They lead on 17 points and are five clear of Poland's Lukasz Przybytek and Pawel Kolodzinski.

The pair were recently selected to sail for Team GB at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games after a gruelling selection battle. Their ticket to Rio is booked and they're now firmly focused on the competition, "Last year we had some difficult times and we made some changes, but now we are on an upward curve,” explained Fletcher. "We are really finding our feet now in Rio style conditions, which are a bit patchy. They seem to be our favourite conditions and we seem to thrive in them.”

Every athlete heading to the Olympic Games is nearing their peak physical and mental fitness. Weymouth and Portland gives the sailors one last chance to test themselves before the summer showcase.

French Rio representatives Julien d'Ortoli and Noe Delpech have found their feet in Weymouth and Portland and after the Brits took the first race win, they claimed the second.

They sit in fourth overall and are enjoying racing in a competitive 30-boat fleet. "Everybody is sailing well,” explained d'Ortoli, "and they are definitely ready for the Olympics so the competition is tough.

"Our preparation isn't finished and we are here to complete that preparation. We need to work on technique, speed and tactics. We are happy that there are good teams here to test against.”

The French team are ahead of many Rio medal hopefuls such as Jonas Warrer and Christian Peter Lubeck (DEN), Nico Delle-Karth and Nikolaus Resch (AUT) and Ryan Seaton and Matthew McGovern (IRL) giving them a huge confidence boost. "It's the last regatta before Rio so just being in front of people is good for the spirit if nothing else,” concluded d'Ortoli.

The 49erFX endeavoured to get a race in but it was just not to be. Sweden's Lisa Ericson and Hanna Klinga will take their lead into the fourth day of racing.

Men's and Women's 470

Overnight leaders Sofian Bouvet and Jeremion Mion of France fell victim to the day's challenging conditions and were black flagged in the single Men's 470 race.

They now count their 21st from the day prior and drop down to tenth overall. They weren't the only top team who fell victim to a black flag. Jordi Xammar and Joan Herp (ESP), Mat Belcher and Will Ryan (AUS) and Yannick Brauchli and Romuald Hausser (SUI) were all hit and drop down.

Luke Patience and Chris Grube (GBR) were the winners of the day, taking the single race victory in a convincing manner. They grabbed an early advantage and never looked back, sealing the win by 50 seconds over Croatia's Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic.

As a result, the Brits are on top on nine points followed by the Croatians on ten. Carl-Fredrik Fock and Marcus Dackhammar follow on 14.

In the Women's 470, the overnight tie between the top three has been split but the margin between first and third sits at just two points.

A third in the single race by Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre (GBR) gives them the advantage. They are followed by compatriots Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark and Switzerland's Linda Fahrni and Maja Siegenthaler.

Nacra 17

Weymouth and Portland is the final event for the German Nacra 17 sailors to clinch the Rio 2016 berth. Beat your national rivals and finish in the top ten, you're in. Claim the overall title, consider yourself a Rio 2016 contender.

Paul Kohlhoff and Carolina Werner (GER) are on track to do exactly both after a solid third in the single Nacra 17 race promoted them to first overall.

Kohlhoff and Werner have been involved in a long-running selection battle with their compatriots Jan Hauke Erichsen and Lea Spitzmann as well as Stefan Rumpf and Anna Bettina Goos.

Weymouth and Portland is the decider and pressure can often be an assumption but it is certainly not the case for Werner as she explained, "The selection process has been going for half a year so we are used to it now.

"We feel pretty good at the moment. We had one good race and we came third in the race today. It's been light conditions out there and the boat is going good in the light wind.”

The Germans are one point ahead of overnight leaders Luke Ramsay and Nikola Girke (CAN) and two ahead of Ben Saxton and Nikola Groves (GBR).

Laser and Laser Radial

Things just keep getting better and better for Hungarian youngster Maria Erdi. After winning gold at the 2015 Youth Sailing World Championships, Erdi qualified for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the tender age of 18 earlier this year at the final qualification event.

The Laser Radial fleet in Weymouth and Portland features all the major contenders for Rio 2016 and they are looking to get one up on their rivals ahead of the summer showcase. Sailing without pressure or expectation around the world class competition, Erdi picked up the only race victory of the day, beating London 2012 silver medallist and two-time World Champion Marit Bouwmeester.

"At the first mark we were all very close. Marit, Evi [van Acker of Belgium], Tatiana [Drozdovskaya of Belarus]. Lots of good people around me and I just tried to concentrate on my own downwind, and it worker because I gained a lot,” explained Erdi. "I was leading quite a bit after the first downwind and on the upwind I was just trying to defend my position. There was a part when the wind stopped and I got really nervous. But luckily I stayed in front and won.

"I'm very happy. I won a race two years ago in Palma and it's been a long wait for another.”

Still young, new to the senior Laser Radial fleet, does Erdi feel any pressure with a big race win and third overall? "No, not at all,” she expressed. "I'm just happy to have a good race at the moment and learn from the bad ones.”

Bouwmeester's second pushes her up to first overall on six points, Lijia Xu (CHN) follows on 13 with Erdi on 15.

The Laser fleet hit the shore at 19:00 local time and Australia's Tom Burton held firm with a second to retain his overall lead. Jesper Stalheim (SWE) and Nick Thompson (GBR) followed in third and fourth and occupy the final podium positions.

Finn

Sweden's London 2012 Olympic gold medallist Max Salminen (SWE) found his groove in the light breeze, taking the single race victory to move into third overall. Salminen grabbed the lead after the second mark rounding and pulled ahead of his competitors to claim a comfortable 18 second victory over Tapio Nirkko (FIN).

Giles Scott's training partner in the build-up to the Rio 2016 is Ben Cornish and he's proving to be a worthy one, snatching the lead off of Scott. Cornish's third to Scott's fifth gives him a two-point lead.

Men's and Women's RS:X

China's Peina Chen continued her dominance in the Women's RS:X with two further race wins. Chen, the 2015 Women's RS:X World Champion, is five points clear of Isobel Hamilton (GBR) who finished second in both of the day's races.

In the Men's RS:X, Toni Wilhem (GER) moved up to first overall following a pair of race victories. The German is now seven points clear of Chunzhuang Liu (CHN) and a further two ahead of Aichen Wang (CHN).

Racing continues today for the fleet series across all classes. The top ten boats in each discipline will compete for the medal race final tomorrow.