Saturday’s 1 pm start of the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race is the high point of the biennial Wicklow Maritime Festival, while also concluding a series of shoreside events which included a Royal Ocean Racing Club breakfast in the Royal Irish Yacht Club yesterday (Friday) morning to bring together competitors past and present to celebrate what is the RORC’s second-longest regularly-staged race.
You might reasonably think that - with 20 races already sailed and Saturday’s 21st marking 44 years of experience – the offshore racing community will have the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race from Wicklow pretty well sussed out.
Taking time out from Round Ireland preparation in Wicklow for Friday’s RORC breakfast at the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire are (left to right) Pete Smyth of the now all-black Ker 46 Searcher, Maeve McCarthy O’Grady, Race Organiser and former WSC Commodore Kyran O’Grady, and RORC Commodore Deb Fish, who will be racing the Sunfast 3600 Bellino. Photo: W M Nixon
Not so. As of Friday night, there were several views of what to expect in the way of wind strength and direction at the start at 1.0pm Saturday off the Wicklow Pierhead. And while the pundits tended to veer towards the view that it would be a big boats’ race to lose, just which big boat will be favoured was and is a matter of debate.
HOW MUCH WIND, AND WHERE?
On the matter of wind strength and direction, the Wicklow Sailing Club Race Office at noon on Friday issued a bulletin saying they expected southerlies for the first 36 hours of the race, with strength still a matter of debate.
With big boats being favoured, the comfortable cruiser-racer Checkmate XX, the First 50 sailed by Nigel Biggs and Dave Cullen (HYC/RIYC), could surprise everyone - as she did in many races in 2023. Photo: Afloat.ie
Yet as far as Sailing on Saturday can see, the gradient wind will be between southwest and west, though there is a chance of local southerlies along the coast, but mostly only north of Wicklow Head.
But that said, you get a feeling in your bones that it will be blowing remorselessly along the coast, giving south to southwest until the Tuskar, and southwest to west beyond that until a small low approaching from the Atlantic on Sunday evening brings in southerlies, and a chance of some sleigh riding for boats getting on to the West Coast.
HIGH PRESSURE RETURNS
But beyond that, with a High Pressure ridge expected to be settling over the Irish Sea to become a proper HP area on Tuesday, getting into the lead will be a mixed blessing, as it gets you that much sooner into light winds – and possibility headwinds at that - for the Northeast and East Coasts’ tidal combats.
Nevertheless, as Niall Dowling’s Baraka GP demonstrated with the double win in 2018, light headwinds in the final long stage can still see the most modern boats make astonishing speeds, though in the bigger picture it did help to have the genius of Ian “Soapy” Moore - originally of Carrickfergus - on board in the strength as your navigator/tactician.
Baraka GP on her way to success in 2018. She won line honours and IRC Overall, yet at the halfway stage she was placed at 23rd. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O’Brien
BIGGER BOATS STILL FAVOURED
Whatever, there’s still a feeling that it’s going to go the way of the bigger boats, if only for the reason that with fairly gently changing wind systems of light to moderate strength, it’s easier to keep up the necessary performance pressure when you’re going to spend the minimum of time in racing.
FAIR PLAY
Offshore racing is renowned for its sense of fair play, a tendency encouraged by the fact that the whole fleet shares the camaraderie of being involved together in a contest with the wind and sea. But while fair play is central to the sport, it isn’t at all a matter of fairness overall, in that few outright winners will declare that their victory was achieved without some element of luck, and sometimes a very considerable element at that.
For if it isn’t luck, what is it? Certainly the top twenty boats in a big fleet event like last year’s Fastnet Race will all have the potential to have been winners, but in the end it was the compounding of some tiny but helpful twists of fate that saw the Botin 52 Caro emerge as winner.
The Botin 52 Caro coming in at Cherbourg to win the 2023 Fastnet. Yet at the Rock, Ino Noir has been overall leader
ROUND IRELAND’S MORE NUMEROUS TWISTS OF FATE
In the Round Ireland, the fleet is smaller, but the twists of fate are if anything greater. For in the early stages, the tide is a powerful factor between Wicklow and the Saltee Islands, while in the concluding section from Malin Head to the South Rock, and then from Rockabill to the finish, tides can mean everything.
Yet even with the slightly random possibility of landing in on some particular stage of the course just as the tide turns against you, the betting is still with the biggies. This is partially because with the bigger boats and their higher speed potential, so the tides - with their known changing velocity through the different stages of the tidal cycle - become a smaller relative factor in the speed made good over the ground.
Put crudely, a biggie can plough into an adverse tide and still get somewhere, whereas a little ’un can come to a stop and stay there, going nowhere for the top four hours of foul tide.
Paul O’Higgins’ JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI (RIYC) is a successful mid-size boat that still has to add the Round Ireland win to her many trophies. Photo: Robert Bateman
TEASING MACHINE TEASING A WINNER
It’s a situation in which the smaller lower-rated boat can only be a loser. So if for now we accept that a big one is likely to be the overall winner, is is it necessarily the biggest of all the 58 entries? The 54ft Teasing Machine from France may be the biggest of all the big ’uns, and was tipped by Mystic Meg earlier this week from Clairvoyance HQ in the Wicklow Hills as the favourite, yet there are other ways of looking at it.
For in the shade of another hill in rather more austere surroundings, we reckon that former RORC Commodore James Neville’s Carkeek 45 Ino Noir has what it takes to be favourite. She is Shaun Carkeek’s best. It took 15,000 hours of meticulous building work to create her. And her very special “liquid finish” topsides can appear as either spooky maroon or darkest black.
The 54ft Teasing Machine from France is Mystic Meg’s prediction for Round Ireland success
Yet either way her whole shape above and below is designed to cause minimum fuss moving through the water, for that “bone in the teeth” beloved of marine artists to illustrate a tall ship ploughing through the sea is actually a sign of water resistance, whereas a few bubbles appearing smoothly and almost invisibly astern is good news for speed.
INO NOIR HAS WHAT IT TAKES
Thus although Teasing Machine may have the advantage in simple terms of length, Ino Noir has everything going for her, including the fact that she was so clearly first at the Rock in last year’s Fastnet that she saw the higher-rated Caro going round, yet by the finish those “twists of fate” saw Caro the winner, while Ino Noir was back in ninth overall, sandwiched in corrected time between those two Class I hotties, Pintia and Sunrise III.
Is she red, is she black? The Carkeek 45 Ino Noir is a visual puzzle in more ways than one
The full list of entries reveals a bundle of vessels over the 40ft size to constitute the favoured big boat section, with any of them in the favoured position. But of course it’s only once the race gets going on Saturday, and in our subsequent updates, that we’ll get a real feeling for form. That said, it isn’t over until it’s over. At mid-stage of the 2018 race, Baraka GP seemed out of it. She was crab-grassed at 23rd overall off the North Mayo coast. Yet by the finish she was the winner every which way by a country mile.
ENTRIES 2024
The latest entry list is here
BREAKFAST WITH JOHN SKIPTON MULVANY
They say there’s a joke so old you’ll find it in the scrolls of Babylon. The barber joke. Old guy goes to have his hair cut. Young barber bounces up, then chattily asks:
“And how would we like our hair cut today?”
“In silence”.
For one who takes a bit of time to get going in the morning, the prospect of the early full Irish, in the august yet very sociable setting of the John Skipton Mulvany-designed architectural gem that is the Royal Irish YC’s complete 174-year-old “pavilion” in Dun Laoghaire, would have been daunting, were it not for the fact that our host was former RORC Commodore and Round Ireland winner Michael Boyd, whose enthusiasm for offshore racing and its people is boundless.
The Sunfast 3600 Bellino will be raced in the two-handed division in the Round Ireland by Deb Fish, Commodore RORC. Photo: Rick Tomlinson
ANCIENT RIYC ROUND IRELAND CONNECTIONS
It may well be that the Royal Irish connection with Round Ireland racing goes back further than any other club. To the 1830s, to be precise, as is revealed in the depths of this piece published in Afloat.ie in the depths of the pandemic lockdown.
But in the RIYC on Friday morning, breakfast was a focused yet cheerful feast as those present including France’s defending champion Laurent Charmy of the J/11 Fastwave, plus a representative delegation of the volunteer corps of Wicklow Sailing Club who keep this astonishing show on the road, led by WSC President Peter Shearer and Race Organiser Kyran O’Grady.
Serious breakfast chat. At the RORC early morning gathering in the Royal Irish YC were (left to right) Paddy Boyd, Hal Sisk, James Neville (Ino Noir owner-skipper and former Commodore RORC), and former RORC Commodore and ISA President John Bourke, whose very extensive offshore racing CV includes navigating Denis Doyle’s Moonduster to her record-making Round Ireland win in 1984. Photo: W M Nixon
We found ourselves next to Michael O’Leary who has done eight Round Irelands, including the one in 1983 when he sailed Imp for her Round Ireland debut – “best boat I ever had”. The speeches reflected the fact that there were probably more former Round Ireland winners and RORC Commodores and Flag Officers past and present than there were civilians, and proceedings were rounded out by Hal Sisk giving his short but telling spiel about Dublin Bay being the world cradle of amateur yacht racing.
BEING A CRADLE IS A MIXED BLESSING
He had everyone convinced – and quite rightly – of the accuracy of this. So it would have been unkind to mention that being the cradle of anything does not necessarily imply a bright future. For it’s generally agreed that the cradle of civilisation is Mesopatamia – the Land Between The Rivers - yet these days the heart of that former cradle is the very troubled city and region of Damascus, and we’d hate to think of anything similar happening to Dun Laoghaire.
Nevertheless one of the attractions of a rugged offshore race is the contrast with the convivial times it brings ashore. Thus while the start of the Round Ireland is nerve-racking for those sailing, the finish is the pure joy of effortless sociability.
SHARED WORLD OF OFFSHORE EVENTS
And at gatherings such as the breakfast, there’s a feeling of the shared world of the classic offshore events, the awareness that the biennial Bermuda Race was due to get going within twelve hours, the Round Ireland was coming up within 28 hours, and next year there’s the Centenary of the Fastnet Race and the foundation of the RORC with it.
The cool one – Laura Dillon looking unflustered by her successful but very tough Round the Island Race a week ago, at the RIYC with Hal Sisk (left) and James Neville. Photo: W M Nixon
Several of us present had done the Golden Jubilee Fastnet in 1975, and were amazed to find ourselves contemplating the Centenary, and with it the knowledge that the winner of that first Fastnet, the incomparable former Pilot Cutter Jolie Brise, is still very much with us.
As it happened, an image had just come my way of Jolie Brise sailing in last weekend’s Round the Island Race, thundering down the stormy west Solent with two reefs in the main, and looking every inch a winner.
As reported on Monday in Afloat.ie, the winner of Class 2B in that race was Harry Heijst’s S&S41 classic Winsome, helmed by our own Laura Dillon, who as the RORC’s Flag Officer at Large - and a cousin of the Smyth brothers who’ll be racing Searcher today - was at the breakfast. When asked if it really was as utterly rough as some said out beyond the Needles with a westerly gale and last Saturday’s weather-going tide, she just smiled and said: “Well, I suppose it was”.
Flagship for us all. The 1913-built Le Havre pilot cutter Jolie Brise, winner of the first Fastnet Race in 1925, powering her way down the relatively sheltered waters of the West Solent in last weekend’s Round the Island Race. Photo: ISC
The latest news from Round Ireland Race 2024 and the race trackers is on this link here
