The Bon Secours WIORA West Coast Championship was held in Tralee Bay Sailing Club from Aug 25-28 with light breezes and glorious sunshine on three days out of four. 

PRO John Leech did an amazing job to get nine races in for all three fleets. He even managed one on Friday despite poor visibility and fickle winds.

IRC 1 was a masterclass in light air sailing from the Farr 31 Tribal from GBSC with Liam Burke at the helm. She won 7 races to easily take the class win. Jaguar (Gary Fort) a J92s from the host club was second with Dexterity an X332 from FYC (Team Foynes) in third.

Tribal also did the business in ECHO 1 but here it was Ibaraki (Mike Guilfoyle) from GBSC in second with Jaguar in third.

IRC was a real ding dong battle between the J 24s from Foynes and a Corby 25 from TBSC. All three won races but at the finish, it was Lady J (Ray McGibney) from FYC who took the trophy. David Buckley’s Eclipse from TBSC was a close second with Darragh McCormack of FYC on Stouche in third. In ECHO 2 LadyJ was also the winner. Eclipse and Stouche swapped places here.

The white sails fleet enjoyed very close racing. Samphire (Mary O’Sullivan) from TBSC was the early leader but Seasmoke (Kevin Reidy) FYC took matters into his own hands on day two with two bullets and a second in the three races. Going into the last day it was very tight with the all-important second discard likely to come into play. Bev Lowes on Poitin from FYC took both races to win by one point from Samphire with Seasmoke on the same total taking third.

Liam Burke sailing the Farr 31 "TRIBAL" and his young crew from Galway Sailing Club won 7 races out of 9 races to win his class at WIORA. Tribal also won under ECHO 1. Photo from left to right -David Carbery, Cormac Conneely, Justin Mitchel Ward, Jack Nolan, Liam Burke (Skipper) Ronan Shepard and Olivia Cure.

WIORA now looks forward to next year’s event to be held on the Shannon Estuary under the burgee of the Royal Western Yacht Club in Kilrush.

Full results available here