#sailorofthemonth – Conor Clarke, who cut his sailing teeth on Dublin Bay, is our Sailor of the Month for January after a dream debut at the Key West Regatta with his Melges 24 Embarr. In fact, "dream" is the theme of the story, as they made their debut in the kind of conditions you could only fantasise about in mid-January Dublin, with 18 knots of breeze in an air temperature of 25 degrees and sunshine sparkling on the bluest sea imaginable.
Cheerfully admitting that the Key West event has long been on his bucket list, Clarke had also brought out a dream team of all the talents with 470 Olympic hopefuls Stuart McNay and Dave Hughes as helmsman and tactician, while Maurice Prof O'Connell was there to knock them back into shape, particularly in the one race when things went pear-shaped, when he did it to such good effect that that they went up through the fleet from the crab grass to battling for the lead against the Norwegian crew at the last gybe.
Embarr did that so neatly that they clocked another bullet. By the final day, they were best-placed on the leaderboard to such good effect they didn't need that last day's racing to stay on top overall. But they sailed those final contests anyway, as you don't get fun sailing of that quality every time out, not even in Key West.
