Frank Whelan's canting keeler Opal is seeing routing times of 28 hours to complete Wednesday's Volvo Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race as the County Wicklow ace reassembles his crew for a third campaign at the National Yacht Club.
The Greystones team has seen previous success with the 2021 ICRA Champion, the J122 Kaya and before that, the 2019 Sovereign's Cup winner Grand Soleil 44 Eleuthera.
"A lot of variations, but 28 hours looks the best at the moment" is what helmsman and Navigator Paddy Barnwell is seeing from the current routings for Opal when she debuts tomorrow at the 2 pm start of the D2D off Dun Laoghaire Harbour.
The Greg Elliott designed speed-machine was built by Knierim in Germany in 2011.
Barnwell is one of three drivers on Opal, with Whelan and O'Leary also down for steering duties. The 13-man crew is completed with a mix of talented former dinghy sailors Andy Verso, Conor Kinsella, John White, Bill Nolan, Kevin O'Rourke, Killian Fitzgerald, Gary Hick, Matt Sherlock, Conor Galligan and Mal Moir.
Regular Afloat readers will know that news of the arrival of the Irish canting keeler broke in April, and since then, it has "been absolutely hectic the last four weeks prepping the boat - hundreds of hours work by all the crew", Barnwell says.
As W M Nixon pointed out in the 2023 D2D Race preview on Saturday, Opal is the highest-rated boat in the 42-boat fleet but is not the only canting keel entry, with Ron O'Hanley's Privateer from New York also expected to make a splash in Wednesday'sforecast north-easterly breezes, which Race Chairman Adam Winkelmann told Lorna Siggins would be ideal for spinnaker reaching on this podcast here
Although few are muttering anything about course records, a sub-24-hour time will be required to beat the course record of 24 hours and 28 minutes set by Mick Cotter's 93ft Windfall in 2019.
After D2D, the Opal campaign features coastal class racing at Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta in July, West Cork's Calves Week in August, and some ISORA racing.