Royal Cork's Nigel Young from Cork Harbour and the National Yacht Club's Will Byrne from Dun Laoghaire were part of the winning crew of Black Seal that successfully defended its Club Swan 36 class title at the Sardinia Challenge in Villasimius last week.

After a very challenging week, where two days were blown out, the Richard Thompson crew were at the centre of a hard-fought battle, with the top three yachts separated by just a single point.

Black Seal edged ahead of Edoardo, Vanni Pavesio's Fra Martina (ITA), and Giangiacomo Serena di Lapigio's G-Spot (MON), who were only separated on countback.

"It was very exciting, very shifty with lots of changes of position, a great deal of fun," said Thompson, adding: "Honours across the races were pretty even with different winners."

There were some spectacular conditions in Sardinia for Black Seal's (above) victory in the ClubSwna36 class Photo: Studio Borlenghi 

Black Seal had an uncharacteristically low 8th-place finish at the first event of the season in Croatia after finishing last year as European Champions, but as bowman Will Byrne explained, "the crew worked really hard with our coach Filippo Togni to analyse what went wrong and came up with a game plan going into the Club Swan Sardinia Challenge".

"An overall improvement in boat speed and handling saw us back up the front of the fleet fighting for podium finishes. The Club Swan 36 is an awesome boat; average speeds of 20+ knots downwind in a blow are a regular occurrence," he told Afloat. Byrne features in the vid below.

The next event in the exciting ClubSwan Racing season is The Nations Trophy (June 20-24), again in Sardinia at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda.

Nigel Young from Cork Harbour and Will Byrne (both pictured centre) from Dun Laoghaire on the podium at the Sardinia Challenge in Villasimius as part of the winning crew of Black Seal in the Club Swan 36 class Photo: Borlenghi

Results here

The first-day leader in the highly-competitive ClubSwan 36 fleet was also the one that had travelled the furthest to be in Valencia – Mamao came all the way from Brazil.

A 1-2-3 scoreline saw her finish two points ahead of the hard-charging Black Seal, with several Irish crew onboard. Richard Thompson's crew took the last two race victories of the day.

Thompson's crew includes National Yacht Club bowman Will Byrne, North Sails sailmaker Nigel Young from Royal Cork and Kinsale ex-pat Jeremy Elliott, in the role of Watch Captain. 

Mamao's owner Haakon Lorentzen said: "It was very good, and we won the day today. We are having fun and it is great to be back international sailing. We are here to do as well as we can.

"The team is from a yacht club in Rio de Janeiro, and we have been sailing together for many years, and they are great sailors."

Results here