The Mediterranean has been a busy place for Irish boats in 2025, with an expanding offshore racing programme for modern craft balanced by major events for Classics whose history often has a distinctly Irish tinge.
Mike O’Donnell’s formerly Solent-based J/121 Darkwood leads the Irish challenge in today’s 118-boat 606-mile Rolex Middle Sea Race, with its dramatic in-harbour start from Malta’s Grand Harbour in Valetta. To a CV that includes the overall win in the 2019 RORC Channel Race, plus class placings in the Round Ireland Race in 2022 and 2024, Darkwood adds a scoreline of 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 2nd in the RORC Class 1 Championships of 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. That’s a lot of notches in the bedpost, and no mistake.
The J/125 Jackknife shows what she can do.
Meanwhile, for the Irish Sea, Sam Hall of Pwllheli – who must have webbed feet by now – is going again with the rare but very attractive J/125 Jackknife, which he owns with his father Andrew. Jackknife is an unbeatable flyer in her preferred offwind conditions while being a good all-rounder, but her rating reflects this, as it’s 1.2356 to the 1.2631 of Darkwood.
ADRIGOLE IN ITALY
Scanning the entry list, we thought we’d another Irish in a boat called Adrigole II. But she’s an X-41 campaigned by Francesco Giordiano of Italy, leaving us wondering just what might have happened to her skipper in beautiful Adrigole on Bantry Bay, that he should be honouring the place in one of Europe’s more rugged offshore races.
Classic challenge – the 606 mile course for the Middle Sea Race
The 2024 winner was Carl-Peter Forster’s TP 52 Red Bandit from Germany, and at first glance it looked like he was sitting this one out. But he has simply moved up the size scale to take over command of Stefan Jentzsch’s Botin 56 Black Pearl which now becomes Germany’s Black Pearl-Red Bandit, and is surely a force to be reckoned with.
The Botin 56 Black Pearl has taken on the skills of the 2024 winning TP52 Red Bandit, and races the Middle Sea as Black Pearl Red Bandit
SEASONED CAMPAIGNER TRENTESAUX
As too is seasoned campaigner Gery Trentesaux of France, who came within an ace of winning the Centenary Fastnet this year to add to his already impressive historic scoreline in that event. The most intriguing thing about this successful veteran is that though he was among those who introduced the rest of the world to the potential of France’s JPK boats, his current mount is the Jason Ker-designed Sydney GTS 43 Long Courrier, which at 43ft and a rating of only 1.166, is always one to be watched.
Gery Trentesaux’s “mixed ancestry” Long Courrier. Photo: Paul Wyeth
Ireland’s record in the Middle Sea Race is mixed, but one clearcut total success was in 2015, when father-and-son team of Dermot & Paddy Cronin of Malahide were clear overall winners of the two-handed division with their First 40.7 Encore. When you’ve a victory like that, the best thing is to get out while you’re so clear ahead, and these days Encore is to be found cruising and passage racing in the Azores.
Dermot Cronin’s Middle Sea class winner, the First 40.7 Encore from Malahide, is now Azores-based.
LIVING CLASSICS
When we think that the Irish classics flotilla making the scene in the Mediterranean in 2025 has included the premier G L Watson restoration, and one of the most famous Fife designs and builds of all time, then a spot of awards celebration doesn’t go amiss even if it involves explanation for those whose historic awareness might only extend to recent contests for the America’s Cup.
For instance, what did it mean when Hal Sisk’s 36ft G L Watson-designed, Hilditch of Carrickfergus-built 1894 cutter Peggy Bawn emerged from the fleet of 150 or so fascinating craft gathered in Monaco for the 17th Monaco Classic Week to take the “Most Authentic” award.
PAINSTAKING EFFORT
Well, as anyone can remember from the 2005 Peggy Bawn restoration led by Michael Kennedy of Dunmore East can recall, the painstaking effort to preserve as much as was usable of the original was truly in a league of its own.
The real McCoy. Peggy Bawn in award-winning style at Monaco
And then when Peggy Bawn started sailing again, the secret ingredient was revealed. James MacAsey of Dun Laoghaire, who owned the boat from 1919 until his death late in the 20th Century, had kept everything, including suits of well-preserved cotton sails.
So although modern sailmakers may aspire to create sails that seem to be of traditional materials, there really is nothing to match the genuine article, and when Peggy Bawn sails forth with the best of her cotton sails set, there’s no doubting this is the real McCoy.
Absolute originals. Peggy Bawn with her very special sails at the Dun Laoghaire Bicentenary Regatta in 2017. Photo: W M Nixon
GSTAAD YC CENTENARIANS RACE
Yes, it is that Gstaad. The ski-ing place that is the ultimate home of a yacht club. It’s no odder than the Chipping Norton Yacht Club in the Cotswolds. In fact, the Gstaad YC has been setting something of a pace since 2011, when it introduced the Centenarians at St Tropez. Only boats at least a hundred years old can take part. And best of all, as it’s a pursuit race the first across the finish line out of a decidedly motley fleet is the winner, the crew can indulge in modern winner antics such as group air punching in a noisy styl which would have had them sectioned back in the day when their boat was new.
Hundred-year-plus boat, very modern victory celebration – Richard Matthews’ restored 1898 Fife cutter Kismet from West Mersea, with crew including Pamela Lee from Greystones, celebrates winning the Gstaad Centenarians race in 2022.
JOHNNY SMULLEN/DENNIS CONNER RESTORATION WINS IN 2025
The Gstaad Centenarians race has tapped into something special, and now classics owners are waiting for the big hundred to come along for their boat. It happened this year to a boat called Leonore (Mauro Pelaschier) , and she won.
But there’s more to this than meets the eye, for when Leonore first appeared among the Mediterranean classics a while back, she was called Cotton Blossom II, one of the 1920s John Anker-designed 49ft Q Class. Her superb restoration, moreover, was done in California by Johnny Smullen (originally of the National YC in Dun Laoghaire, where he keeps up his now very senior membership) for Dennis Conner, aka Mr America’s Cup.
The restored Cotton Blossom II makes her debut in San Diego
The Dennis in into classics restoration in a big way, so after some successful Med seasons, Cotton Blossom II was sold on to leave space for other projects, and as Leonore she has almost succeeded in acquiring a new identity, but she’s fondly remembered in San Diego.
Leonore’s crew celebrate immediately on winning the Gastaad Centenarians 2025
That said, there was some confusion, as her name of Cotton Blossom II meant that at some stage she was owned by Walter J Wheeler, whose most famous boat in the line was Cotton Blossom IV, which originally was the Fife-designed 70ft Bermudan cutter Hallowe’en, line honours winner in the 1926 Fastnet Race.
Walter Wheeler had the resources to be an own-maintenance owner to such an extent that he had a workshop the size of a small factory to tend to Cotton Blossom/Hallowe’en’s needs, and with Rod Stephens help he gave her a Bermudan yawl rig, which to my mind looked very well indeed.
Hallowe’een yawl-rigged as Cotton Blossom IV in the 1950s.
But her hidden history caught up with her, and she acquired owners who wished to rig her as nearly as possible to the boat which made history in the Fastnet Race in 1926, and she has been owned for quite some time now by a Royal Irish YC syndicate who have had a successful year in 2025, with nine podium finishes including four wins, three seconds and two thirds.
Billy Mooney of Dun Laoghaire helming Mariella in the 1950s racing in the Clyde. Photo: Ian Gilchrist
Close competition is coming from the 74ft yawl Mariella, very unusual in having been designed by Alfred Mylne yet built by Fife in 1936. For much of her time in Scotland she was owned and campaigned by Ronnie Teacher the whiskey magnate, who had a great sailing friend in Billy Mooney of Dun Laoghaire - he helmed Mariella to some fine victories.
The rivals – Mariella (left) and Hallowe’en berthed together post-race this year. Photo: Brian Mathews
But now it has all panned out that Hallowe’en and Mariella seem to be racing in lockstep, yet there’s one major event coming up next year in which this competition will be set aside. For of course in 2026, Hallowe’en will be celebrating her Centenary, and it is surely part of her destiny to be racing in the Gstaad Centenarians from which Mariella is excluded for another ten years.
A mighty ship. Mariella developing full power in Caribbean racing
