A lone sailor was rescued after his boat suffers engine failure and a sail blow out off the Old Head of Kinsale.

The Courtmacsherry All-Weather Trent Class RNLI Lifeboat was called out this afternoon Tuesday at 2 pm to go to the aid of a 30-foot yacht with a lone sailor on board that got into difficulties two miles south-west of the Old Head of Kinsale in West Cork. The Courtmacsherry All-Weather Lifeboat, Frederick Storey Cockburn under Coxswain Sean O'Farrell and a crew of 5 were away quickly from their moorings, after being alerted by the Coastguard that the yacht had suffered engine failure and a sail blow out on passage from Glandore to Kinsale.

Once the Lifeboat reached the causality at 2.26 pm, Lifeboat Coxswain O'Farrell assessed the situation. As the casualty was completely disabled and conditions at sea were worsening, a decision was taken to put the Lifeboat towline on board the yacht and proceed under tow to the nearest port of Kinsale. Conditions at sea today were fresh and blustery Force 5 winds with strong 3 metre swells off the Old Head. The Lifeboat proceeded to tow the causality back to Kinsale at a slow, safe speed and arrived at the safe surrounds of the Harbour Marina at 4.30 pm. The sailor was mighty pleased to see the Lifeboat today and expressed his extreme thanks to all involved in today’s rescue.

The RNLI Lifeboat crewmembers under Coxswain Sean O'Farrell after they arrived back to base in Courtmacsherry

The Courtmacsherry RNLI Lifeboat voluntary Deputy Launching Authority Vincent O'Donovan said, “With the freshening winds today, it was great to reach the causality so quickly and give the Lone sailor the comfort that he required. Great praise is due again for the fast response of all the crew and officers who left their workplaces and rushed to the station to help a fellow seaman in distress at sea this afternoon”.

The Courtmacsherry RNLI Lifeboat Crew involved in this afternoon’s callout were Coxswain Sean O Farrell, Mechanic Stuart Russell and crewmembers Mark John Gannon, Dara Gannon, Dave Philips and Dean Hennessy.

This was the 21st callout of 2021 for the All-Weather Lifeboat Station in Courtmacsherry.

Royal Cork J/109 Jelly Baby was the winner of SCORA's coastal race from Kinsale to Baltimore completing the passage in a corrected time of 7 hours 57 minutes and 16 seconds. 

There were six entrants for the overnight feeder race to join boats already in Baltimore and Schull for next week's Calves Week Regatta. 

It is the second coastal victory for the Brian Jones skippered Crosshaven yacht this season, having previously won Kinsale Yacht Club's Fastnet Race in July.

The Jones crew beat Michael Carroll's larger Elan 40 from Kinsale that finished on a corrected time of 8:53:01.

Frank Doyle's J112 Cara was the only other finisher with George Radley's Half Tonner Cortegada, Frank Caul's Prince of Tides and Padraig O'Donovan's Chameleon all retiring.

The six boat SCORA Kinsale to Baltimore Race fleet make slow progress along the West Cork coast Photo: Bob Bateman

A prizegiving will be held at Baltimore Sailing Club today. 

Following the departure of Paul Murphy after 18 years of service, Richard McKinlay has been appointed Marina Manager at Kinsale Yacht Club.

He is joined by Ciaran Newport as Maintenance Technician on the marina.

The club has installed a mesh network for Wi-Fi on the marina.

Wins in the second and third races in the Squib Southern Championships at Kinsale Yacht Club this afternoon has handed the overnight lead to Northern Ireland's Peter Wallace and Fiona Ward.

The Wallace and Ward partnership from Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club on Belfast Lough have a four-point cushion over local Kinsale pair Matthias Hellstern and Colm Daly on 11 points. 

KYC pair Matthias Hellstern and Colm Daly are lying in second place Photo: Bob Bateman

Currently in third place, Kinsale clubmates Ian Travers and Keith O'Riordan are on 12 points. 

12 boats are competing with ten from the host club and two Northern visitors.

Full results are here

Racing continues tomorrow

A well-timed postponement meant the nine-boat Kinsale Yacht Club SCORA Fastnet Race got away in a great breeze this morning at 10 am for its annual offshore race even though the fleet will not now round the Rock but the much closer Kowloon Bridge south cardinal buoy instead. 

Scroll down for start photo gallery below

The Kowloon Bridge buoy that marks the position of a wrecked ship is just off Toe Head on the West Cork coast giving boats a much easier chance of completing the course back to Kinsale in the forecasted light winds.

The boats started on a tight reach before popping spinnakers as they reached Kinsale's harbour mouth.

Sponsored by UK Sailmakers Ireland, the fleet includes the on form host club J109 entry of Artful Dodjer (Finnbarr O'Regan). 

The Kinsale J109 entry of Artful Dodjer (Finnbarr O'Regan) Photo: Bob Bateman

Last year's winner the Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo (Denis and Annamarie Murphy) is also racing along with the Grand Soleil 34 Justina (John Treanor) from the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire Harbour as well as other cruiser racers, Reavra Too, White Tiger, Valfreya and Flyover from Dunmore East in County Waterford. 

Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo (Denis and Annamarie Murphy) Photo: Bob Bateman

The Dublin Bay Grand Soleil 34 Justina dockside in Kinsale with skipper John Treanor (left) and among the crew Adam Winkelmann (second from left) the organiser of June's Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race Photo: Bob Bateman

Bob Bateman's Kinsale SCORA Fastnet Race Start Photo Gallery

Kinsale RNLI’s lifeboat launched on Saturday 3 July to help a solo yachtsman struggling at sea with damaged sails.

The yachtsman had left the Caribbean island of Carriacou on Thursday 13 May en route to the UK. But three weeks into the voyage, the 51ft ketch lost engine power, forcing the skipper to continue his 6,500km journey under sail.

He told his rescuers that his yacht was becalmed in the Atlantic for 10 days when the wind dropped. Then after he was able to resume his voyage, the sails were damaged, further hampering progress.

By the time the Irish Coast Guard became aware of his plight on Saturday morning, the vessel was travelling at just three knots per hour with no prospect of reaching its intended destination.

Kinsale RNLI’s volunteers tracked the vessel online throughout the day and grew increasingly concerned for its safety. At 6pm, the lifeboat was requested to launch by the coastguard to assess the situation, and the crew located the vessel off the Old Head of Kinsale.

Lifeboat helm Jonathan Connor placed crew member Felix Milner on board the stricken yacht and, after consultation, decided that taking the ketch under tow was necessary to assist the vessel to reach the nearest safe and suitable port.

Milner remained on board the yacht on the final leg of the journey to Kinsale Harbour to safeguard the wellbeing of the skipper, who was exhausted but uninjured despite his long ordeal.

After arriving into Kinsale at 9.15pm, the yachtsman enjoyed his first hot shower in over seven weeks before being reunited with his son and two daughters, who live in West Cork and were waiting for him on the pier.

Commenting on the rescue, the yachtsman said: “The RNLI Kinsale are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Their expertise and commitment leave me humbled. It is an institution I have always supported and will do so for the rest of my days.”

Kinsale helm Connor added: “It is a tribute to the yachtsman’s seamanship that he made a 6,500km voyage single-handed and remained calm and focused despite the many problems he encountered in the course of his journey.

“He is very fit and able but was clearly exhausted after 52 days alone at sea and it was the right decision to help him over the final hurdle and bring him safely to Kinsale.”

Kinsale RNLI’s inshore lifeboat was launched on Friday afternoon (25 June) to help an injured sailor on a racing yacht competing in the Sovereign’s Cup.

Volunteers were paged before 2pm following a report to the Irish Coast Guard that a crew member had sustained a head injury after being struck by the boom.

The yacht was met by the Kinsale lifeboat just off Charles Fort, where an RNLI volunteer boarded the Class One vessel to carry out a medical assessment.

As the casualty was bleeding heavily from a head wound, lifeboat helm Jim Grennan decided the safest course of action was to transfer him to the lifeboat and bring him to Kinsale for immediate medical attention. The casualty was accompanied by the yacht skipper who was deeply concerned for his welfare.

Emergency medical personnel had been alerted before the lifeboat launched and the RNLI crew handed the man into their care, where he received stitches to his head wound.

Lifeboat helm Jim Grennan said: “These accidents can happen to even the most experienced sailors and the crew on board the racing yacht remained calm and followed the correct procedures to the letter.

“They had dressed the casualty’s wound and the yacht skipper stayed with him throughout his ordeal until he received the all-clear from the medical team in Kinsale.

“We were happy to be able to bring him back safely and commend the yacht crew for their swift reactions.”

After the first two races in IRC Class One, Pat Kelly's Storm from Howth Yacht Club and Rush Sailing Club leads the 14-boat division of the O'Leary Insurances Sovereign's Cup Regatta at Kinsale. 

Kelly is five points clear at the top after two races sailed in light to medium winds on the first day of the biennial event that has attracted a total fleet of 62 boats for the four-day event.

Close combat - J109s make up ten of the 14 boat IRC of fleet at the 2021 Sovereign's Cup Photo: Bob Bateman

Dominating the top three places overall after day one, J109s also sit in second and third places in that division too. Kelly's clubmates Richard Colwell and John Murphy are second in Outrajeous with Royal Cork's Jelly Baby skippered by Brian Jones in third but tied on points.

Olson 30 leads IRC Two

In five boat Division Two IRC, Royal Cork's Olson 30 Coracle VI skippered by Kieran Collins leads from two half tonners on three points. David Kelly's Half Tonner King One is one point behind in second place with Cove Sailing Club's Cortegada on five points in third overall. 

The Olson 30 Coracle VI skippered by Kieran Collins

Quarter Tonner leads IRC Three 

A Royal Cork Quarter Tonner leads a five boat IRC 3 Division with Dave O'Regan, Denise Phelan and Tony Donworth's Supernova on top from David Lane's YaGottaWanna. In third place is Rob O'Reilly's BonJourno! Part Deux from Monkstown Bay Sailing Club.

Twomey takes White Sail win

A combined fleet of almost 20 White Sails entries racing in two Divisions enjoyed a single race that started and finished inside Kinsale Harbour off the historic Charles Fort saw veteran paralympian and former Kinsale YC Commodore John Twomey take the opening race bullet both on the water and under ECHO handicap.

White Sails principal race officer Donal Hayes sent both fleets off on different courses yet still managed to have the last boats in both finish within one minute of one another.

Sovereign's Cup provisional results after day one here 

Sovereign's Cup Day One Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

The largest boat currently racing in the Sovereigns Cup series at Kinsale is Conor Doyle's locally-based Xp50 Freya. For most of us, she's a biggy, and an elegant one at that. But if you were to exit Kinsale Yacht Club through its venerable original front door and amble town-wards along O'Connell Street, you'd soon reach the office of Rob Doyle Design, and find yourself grappling with decidedly abstruse concepts of big boat size several multiples of Freya.

For if you could inveigle your way therein, you'd find that one of the ideas they're working on is Project Fury, a concept 63-metre sloop-rigged superyacht which they're developing in tandem with Van Geest Design, with whom they're already working on two 52 metre sailboats under construction in The Netherlands.

He's used to dealing with big numbers – Rob Doyle in his Kinsale design office.

It boggles the mind as to why they've selected a name like Project Fury, but to get a notion of the proposed boat's size, there's some basis in the fact that 63 metres is 206ft, and therefore simple souls will latch onto the fact that she's more than four times longer than Freya. But that's only a distraction. Boat size increases volumetrically, and the figures zoom up exponentially. 

It all looks clean and simple, but there's an enormous design challenge in having all sail controls effective yet invisible, while incorporating features whereby the stern area opens up to become an on-board lido.

Thus as Project Furey's beam is envisaged as being 43ft, while her substantial and several-decked hull depth is augmented by a large multi-storey coachroof, it could be argued that she's all of twenty-fives times larger than Freya, and it wouldn't surprise us at all to hear that the factor is much greater then that.

Either way, it's an awful lot of boat. Yet the two design teams are determined to optimise her performance, so there's a certain creative dynamic tension between the Kinsale team's tradition of elegance and comfort, and the Dutch group's fondness for lightweight yet hyper-strong austerity. Either way, some very advanced construction techniques and special materials are involved at every level.

For the rest of us, it all looks entirely off the wall. But in this even-more-crazy-than-usual world of ours, Superyachts are currently one of the happening areas of economic activity and realisation.

But whether we'll ever see her in Kinsale is another matter. Even if the draft can be adjusted to suit the available depths, the masthead will be scraping expensively against the cloud-base……

Imagine being on the helm of a machine like this – even the Masters of the Universe will have to form an orderly queue…..

A busy weekend for Kinsale RNLI continued on bank holiday Monday (7 June) when the inshore lifeboat launched twice to assist boats in difficulty.

Miss Sally Anne Baggy II - Never Fear, Baggy’s Here launched at 2.45pm to assist the 20ft sailing boat with two people on board, which was taking on water and in danger of sinking off the Old Head of Kinsale.

After assessing the situation, the lifeboat crew transferred one of their number onto the bow of the stricken vessel to raise the hull and slow the ingress of water.

This stabilised the boat, which was taken under tow and brought safely to Kinsale’s main pier.

Lifeboat helm Jonathan Connor said: “The two people on board played it by the book and were able to give the coastguard the necessary information to enable us to quickly find them.

“One had radio training and both were wearing lifejackets, which are essential if you are going on the water.”

A few hours later, the volunteers answered their fourth emergency callout of the bank holiday weekend when the lifeboat was tasked to assist a yacht that had lost its mast.

The inshore lifeboat was on the way at 6pm to assist the 26ft vessel with two people on board just south of the harbour mouth.

After ascertaining that the passengers were uninjured, two lifeboat crew members boarded the yacht and secured the mast before it was safely towed back to Kinsale Harbour.

Kinsale RNLI’s Connor, who was helm on all four callouts over the weekend, added: “We expected the sunny weather and easing of restrictions to bring more people to the Kinsale area, but we were quite surprised to be called out four times in such a short period.”