Jack Fahy of Dun Laoghaire and the University College Dublin Sailing Club Team Racing Squad hit the target spot on at the weekend, when they emerged as winners of the elite eight-team Top Gun Invitational Series, organised on the premier English team competition venue of Farmoor Reservoir by Oxford University.

It’s the first time that UCD have been invited to this exclusive “Championship of Champions”, but they rose to the challenge with style in a superbly-run series. It was of course very much a team effort, but in the time-honoured manner we make Team Captain Jack Fahy the Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month (Team Racing) for February, while ensuring that the entire squad are up in lights, and they are: Jack Fahy & Emily Riordan, Liam Glynn & Triona Hinkson, and Tom Higgins & Cian Lynch.

Bringing it all back home. Jack Fahy and the UCD team on Sunday after winning the Top Guns Invitational at Oxford at their debut appearance Photo: Nigel Vick s

But while they can celebrate for a day or two now, this weekend they’ll be very much the target themselves, as the Irish University Championship is being organised by Trinity College Dublin at Carlingford. That said, the last time the national college sailors were at Carlingford en masse was in October 2021, when UCD won and Jack Fahy was the nominated Sailor of the Month, so there’s form here.

When 144 sailors descend on a club like the hospitable but relatively small (numerically-speaking) Carlingford Sailing Club for a festival of team racing, the pressure is on, both afloat and ashore. That pressure is in no way lessened by the 24 teams being drawn from nine universities all over Ireland.

All six members of the winning team have to keep their cool to make it to the top. But the pressure for this is most challenging on the winning team captain, and in October's highlight of the 2021 Irish Universities Eastern Championship, it was a University College Dublin team captained by Jack Fahy, which took the trophy.