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Displaying items by tag: GP14 Munsters

Day 1 of the 2023 GP14 Munster Championships on Saturday (17 June) saw 26 crews arrive at Tralee Bay Sailing Club. This was the first time in over 40 years the fleet had been in Fenit, writes Andy Johnston.

PRO John Leech, having welcomed the fleet at the morning briefing, got the fleet on the water for a midday first gun. Oscillating wind meant a few delays but Race 1 got under way by 12.20pm in about seven to eight knots.

With dolphins surfacing on the start line close to the committee boat, Ger Owens and Mel Morris had a great start and led Sean Craig and Stephen Boyle to the weather mark. Close behind them were JP & Carolyn McCaldin, Ruan & Tash O’Tiarnaigh, Curly Morris and Meg Tyrrell, and Colman Grimes and Ross Gingles.

By start of second triangle, Owens and Craig had extended their lead with Grimes and O’Tiarnaigh and a fast-improving Ross Kearney and Daniel Nelson looking for the last podium spot. Grimes took third with Kearney fourth and O’Tiarnaigh fifth, with Conor Twohig and Matthew Cotter finishing well to take sixth.

The start of Race 2 was AP a couple of times before getting into sequence. Then crashing thunder and lightning interrupted things with the PRO sending the fleet home temporarily.

Within 15 minutes Met Éireann had posted a Status Yellow warning for Kerry, indicating the lightning was here for the rest of the day. That was the trigger to abandon racing, with four races and an earlier start mow scheduled for Sunday (18 June).

Race 1 results can be found on the Tralee Bay Sailing Club website HERE.

Published in GP14

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.