It was the dog what done it. A hound of mysterious powers has changed family fortunes for a Crosshaven sailing clan. The Murphy-Fegan family’s Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo, the Royal Cork Yacht Club Vice Admiral’s Cleopatra-style gilded barge, so to speak, may have made a Fastnet Race start in Class 2 off Cowes a week ago so perfect that it was a case of “as seen on television” over and over again, as there was precious little else to see in a very murky Solent, and nothing half as good as Nieulargo’s beautifully-called start
And then on Thursday morning, just after 9.0am at Cherbourg, Nieulargo emerged from some very fast overnight sailing to topple Mike O’Donnell’s J/121 Darkwood from her long-time Number One position in the Irish flotilla, thereby ensuring that the Vice Admiral Annamarie Fegan and her family are the latest holders of the quietly prestigious Gull Salver in this its Golden Jubilee Year.
Nieulargo’s perfect port tack Fastnet Race start a week ago – every other boat in IRC 2 was under her lee, and she continued in the top three in class beyond the first 24 hours.
Yet anyone tracking the race as it so ruggedly unfolded will have realised that, despite the magic start, things at times weren’t going so well for Nieulargo. In fact, sometimes not at all well, in a very wearing race. But although they had to live with slipping down the listings after spending the first day or two at second in IRC 2, as Cherbourg approached it all came together for a rousing finish.
So what had got their act together again? Well, as a rapidly circulating cyber-image has revealed, it was a favourable spell cast by the Holy Hound of West Cork, the amiable Bernese mountain dog known as Sandy O’Leary of Baltimore.
Baltimore SC’s Robert O’Leary was concerned that his friends and relatives racing aboard Nieulargo were on a streak of bad luck. But he reckoned that in a sailing context, it would be pointless making a pilgrimage with Sandy to the top of the nearest Holy Mountain of Mount Gabriel, let alone contemplating the annual sacred hike which takes place tomorrow (Sunday) up Croagh Patrick in Mayo, which people love so much they’re literally loving it to bits.
FASTNET ROCK THE “PERFECT PEAK”
On the contrary, the perfect peak from which to cast the runes was atop the Fastnet Rock itself, which Sandy (presumably so named for the vast quantities of local beaches which his thick coat brings back to the house from the neighbourhood’s golden and silver strands) did with dignity and modest perfection.
The Holy Hound of West Cork – Druid Dog Sandy O’Leary casting the favourable runes atop the Fastnet Rock. Photo: Rob O’Leary
This may not have got Nieulargo back in the frame, but it put them 24 minutes ahead on corrected time over Darkwood. Now this may have been a matter of being 54th overall ahead of the boat, which was 55th, but as we said at the start of it all, one of the reasons that the mega-fleet Fastnet Race is so popular is that, no matter where you may be in the fleet, you’ll soon find there are maybe half a dozen boats that you’re really racing against.
And as people spill the beans in the post-race euphoria, it’s surprising how many shared experiences there are at every level of the fleet. For instance, anyone watching Max Klink’s overall winner, the Botin 52 Caro, powering along at sea during the race will have assumed that all was well on board.
SURVIVAL SAILING
Well, so it was - up to a point. But as Max Klink and his Dun Laoghaire crewman Cian Guilfoyle have recalled, for the first six hours it was survival sailing, mainly a matter of keeping “the asset” intact, which at times required the speed to be cut back to 6 knots with all the deck crew in the cockpit as the weather rail was a place of real hazard.
Then the sailing master Adrian Stead revealed that they’d allowed themselves to stray into the Portland Bill Tide Race, with seas so violent that the masthead wand for the electronic instrument was lost. This meant that they had to steer with old-fashioned skills to win the race, a feat probably not achieved since Ger O’Rourke of Kilrush won overall without instrumentation in the Cookson 50 Chieftain in 2007.
Caro finishes to win overall – everything may look okay on board, but it could well be the first time that a Fastnet Race win has been achieved without instrumentation since Ger O’Rourke of Limerick did it with Chieftain in 2007. Photo: Paul Wyeth
THE LETHAL TIDE RACE AT PORTLAND BILL
Time was when boats moved that much slower, and the avoidance of the boat-breaking tide race off Portland Bill was a major factor in planning tactics. Successful two-hander Sam Hunt of Kinsale’s father Keith – a veteran of at least seventeen Fastnets – recalls racing with the great Adlard Coles in the prototype Nicholson 36 Cohoe IV in the 1963 Fastnet, when the star entrant was the new Clare Lallow-built S&S 43 Clarion of Wight, a boat on which no expense had been spared.
It was blowing a lot of wind out of the west, but the imminence of an anticipated veering meant Cohoe had to face going inside the Portland Race – where there’s a tiny relatively calm tide-free gap right inshore – in the dark, in order to stay along the land. They did this with a searchlight aimed at the rocky shore and a tack in the blackest of nights every four minutes or less.
Two-handed racing star Sam Hunt (left) at the recent Winners’ Party in Kinsale YC with his parents Poppy and Keith. With a tally of 17, Keith Hunt has probably done more Fastnet Races than anyone else in Ireland, and was with the legendary Adlard Coles aboard Cohoe IV in 1963’s stormy race, when they gave a textbook demonstration of how to take the inside passage at Portland Bill in the dark. Photo: Robert Bateman
In the end, the very special one-off Clarion may have won overall as expected, but it was only by six minutes from the production boat Cohoe IV. Her fearless yet calculated approach to rounding Portland Bill played a key role in her success, so much so that sixty years later, it is remembered every bit as well as Clarion’s win.
These intensely personal memories from the times when the Fastnet Race fleet was small enough for everyone to know everyone else were already becoming a thing of the past by 1971 when, as mentioned earlier this week, Reggie Walsh of Dun Laoghaire and Bob Fannin of Howth reckoned they’d one final chance to stage a manageable Fastneteers Dinner for everyone who had completed a Fastnet Race on an Irish boat.
“UNEXPECTED SURPLUS” BECOMES PRIZED TROPHY
The unexpected surplus from this monumental celebration resulted in the Gull Salver (named for Harry Donegan of Cork’s pioneering participant in the 1925 race) for the best-placed Irish boat in future Fastnets. And though its subsequent history at times became confused, in this the year of its Golden Jubilee, we can be clear that Nieulargo is the winner.
Mungo Park’s Tam o’ Shanter, a new Chance 37 and one of Britton Chance’s “more normal” designs, was first winner of the Gull Salver 50 years ago in 1973. Photo: W M Nixon
The first winner in 1973 was Mungo Park’s Tam O’Shanter from Howth, a Chance 37 to one of the few reasonably normal designs created by the eccentric American professor Britton Chance. He could be so persuasive in his more off-the-wall theories that one time, he even talked someone into building an America’s Cup potential defender 12 Metre with a flat surface to the aft edge of the keel. He was convinced he’d come up with a design concept with proportions such that the flat-back keel fooled the passing sea into thinking that the keel concluded with the usual sweeping finish, thereby providing extra lateral resistance with less wetted area.
TESTING THE “FLAT-BACK” KEEL
Early races were not encouraging, so the great Ted Turner was talked into giving the new boat a go. And he gave of his best, but the Britton boat was definitely off the pace. So as he hadn’t actually seen it out of the water, Turner arranged for the boat to be lifted while he and Chance had drinks and discussion in the club, and then they went along for the inspection with drinks in hand, and Professor Chance stepping up the output of theories while Turner silently drew on his stately cigar.
He gave the keel a thoughtful inspection from every angle while the lecture continued and then stood back and removed his cigar: “Britty”, says he, “Britty, even a turd ends in a point”.
COMPRESSION CHAMBER OF MILLBAY IN PLYMOUTH
Back in the day when the Fastnet Race finished in Plymouth and you’d the heady delights of waiting in some rough berth until allowed into the lock, which - eventually – would permit you into the good but basic shelter of Millbay Dock, there was a sort of compression chamber camaraderie about it all.
This was particularly so in 1975 when we were racing the one-off McGruer 47 Tritsch-Tratsch II and – having failed to make the Irish Admiral’s Cup Team – we could sail our own light weather Fastnet and thus found ourselves in the first ten in Class 1 (79 boats racing), getting seventh while Ted Turner was just two minutes ahead in his recently-acquired Tenacious, later the survival star of the 1979 Fastnet storm.
Perhaps the most dangerous moment in the entire Fastnet Race experience of 1975 – trying to hit an extra high note in the choir service while waiting to get into Millbay Dock. Photo: Jonathan Eastland
Plymouth being Plymouth, we’d been kept forever in the dark down at the bottom of the sea-lock into Millbay Dock with the cream of Class 1, but it proved to be a remarkable echo chamber for a spontaneous choral performance, where the heightened acoustics so overcame a future distinguished yacht agent and broker that he had to be secured to the rigging for his own good, heavily blindfolded but allowed access to drink and smokes.
“For his own safety…” Within a few years, this anonymous Fastnet Race celebrant had become a leading yacht agent and broker. Photo: Jonathan Eastland
This is the Big Boys’ Game – Ted Hood (back to camera), Dennis Conner and Ted Turner shooting the breeze after the 1975 Fastnet Race, when the fleet in Millbay Dock was probably worth more than the dock itself. Photo: W M Nixon
Quite what format yesterday (Friday’s) gala prize-giving promised in Cherbourg was still a matter of conjecture at time of writing, but as there seem to have been pre-prize semi-official ceremonies since mid-week for winners’ flags, we can only hope that good humour and manners still prevail, as the interaction between rough yotties and civic dignitaries is not always as smooth as it might be.
Thus The Incidents In The Town Hall in Harwich, some time well back in the previous millennium at a function before the annual RORC Harwich to Hook of Holland Race, are now officially agreed not to have happened at all. But since then in Plymouth, there have been times when the City Fathers have required a robust sense of humour at the Fastnet Race awards ceremony in the Guildhall.
The real stars of the 50th Fastnet Race – 77-year-old Alain Fournier coming into Cherbourg in the midst of his family and friends who make up the crew of the veteran J/133 Pintia, winner of IRC 1.
In 1971, as soon as the silverware had been distributed, it became a moveable feast, and our Class IV group - in which Alan Bourdon from Poole had pipped us for first place – decided that we were beholden to take the trophy and our noisy bonhomie to an upstairs cellar night club (all things are possible in Plymouth on a wet Friday afternoon), where a person well stricken in years was performing as a stripper.
Unfortunately, in getting out of the taxi, Alan stumbled and dropped the Battler Beedle Quaich or whatever RORC trophy was in the Class IV role that year, and it rolled into the gutter. There, Davy McBride of Dunmore East scooped it up before the continuous traffic flattened it, and he told Alan to go on ahead without the cup, as Dunmore East was now in charge of Trophy Safety.
Up ahead meanwhile, the Ancient of Days in charge of admission had copped on to the unexpected bounty which fate had visited on his humble establishment, and had upped the entry fee to the then very considerable charge of £5. But when Davy finally came stumbling up the stairs carrying the trophy, the door-keeper pulled his master stroke of hospitality, and told him with a toothless grin: “You won the cup, you can come in for free”.
