#HYC - Howth Yacht Club has posted a draft letter for all club members and harbour users to send to their public representatives highlighting the urgent need to dredge Howth Harbour.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, levels of silt build-up in the North Co Dublin harbour have accumulated to around 1.5 metres, rendering low-water spring-tide launches impossible.

The Harbour Users Action Group claims that various Governments since the 1980s have passed the buck for responsibility.

As such, the issue should be a priority among Howth voters heading into the General Election later this month.

In other HYC news, the club will host the ISA Cruising Conference on 20 February (more details HERE) a week before the club's race management team attends the ISA Race Officials Conference the at the Green Isle Hotel on 28 February.

The club is also hosting a prizegiving dinner for all Class 3 racing teams tomorrow evening Friday 12 February (contact the office for reservations) and another dinner next month in honour of the club's first commodore WH Boyd on Saturday 12 March, with a talk by Brian Turvey and Afloat.ie's own WM Nixon.

The challenge of a tough and competitive offshore race in the warm and idyllic racing conditions of the Caribbean has been taken up by two teams from Howth Yacht Club that will travel to Antigua to take part in the Royal Ocean Racing Club's 'Caribbean 600'. The 2016 race will see 66 entries start this 600-mile long offshore on the 22nd February which, due to the strong 20 knot trade winds and challenging navigation around 11 islands, is quickly becoming a classic in the RORC's calendar.

Darren Wright has put together an experienced offshore team that has chartered the First 40 Southern Child for the race. The team is made up of HYC members that raced the same boat in the 2014 Rolex Middle Sea Race, including Kieran Jameson, Frank Dillon, Rick De Neve, Jonny White, Colm Bermingham as well as owner Lucy Reynolds. Darren has added further strength to this campaign with the inclusion of his brother Michael along with Howth K25 Squad member Luke Malcolm and HYC's former-Commodore Brian Turvey.

One of three First 40s entered in this 600-mile offshore race, Southern Child is likely to be competing in the competitive and closely-matched IRC 2 division, while Howth's other entry, Conor Fogarty's SunFast 3600 Bam is likely to compete in the IRC 3 division and will be one of the smallest boats racing amongst the 66-boat fleet. An eclectic team of experienced offshoreracers will join Conor, including Simon Knowles, Daragh Heagney, Paddy Gregory, Roger Smith and Anthony Doyle. Conor told us "'We would hope to follow on from the success that Red Shift (another Sunfast 3600) had last year and it would be great to win in IRC 3. There is another 3600 in our class One and Only, but she trailed us by nearly 2 days in the ARC, so we will have to wait and see if she's up to speed yet."

Bam is then off to the Gill Commodore's Cup and Heineken Regatta in St.Maarten, more of a 'leisurely' event for Conor and the team, as they don't expect their CSA rating to be great. (CSA is the Caribbean Racing Association's version of ECHO, so Bam's introduction to the fleet will mean that she's likely to carry an initial hefty rating.) Bam will be sailed back 2,200nm to the Azores by Conor (single handed) in preparation for the inaugural Solo Fastnet in July, where he will compete with seven other 3600's all sailing single-handed in this event for the first time. The boat is also entered into the 2-handed Volvo Round Ireland and the 2-handed ISORA season - it's going to be a busy year for Conor!

The Caribbean 600 continues to grow in prestige and has become a real jewel in the RORC's racing calendar. The Howth teams will also be jostling for overall IRC honours with the world’s best, as this year's Caribbean 600 has attracted an astounding array of the fastest and most competitive offshore racing yachts on the planet. Shipping straight to the Caribbean from the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race will be Comanche, Jim & Kristy Hinze Clark's American 100ft Supermaxi, which rightly claims to be the fastest monohull in the world for her 24-hour record run (2015 Transatlantic Race, 618.01 nm, averaging 25.75 knots).

Comanche races with as many as 29 crew, led by Kenny Read, who was on board George David's Rambler 100 to set the RORC Caribbean 600 course record in 2011 (40 hours 20 mins 02 secs). Given the right conditions, Comanche is very capable of breaking Rambler 100's record. Joining Comanche in IRC ‘canting keel division’, will be Ireland's third entry in the star studded 66 boat fleet - Adrian Lee's Cookson 50 Lee Overlay Partners. Adrian and his team are no slouches when it comes to offshore racing in warm waters, having broken the monohull speed record in the Dubai to Muscat Race in 2013 and also won the inaugural Caribbean 600 in 2009.

Other boats in that class include Bouwe Bekking's Dutch Volvo Ocean 65 Team Brunel and the magnificent Andrews 80 Donnybrook. This will be the first occasion that a Volvo Ocean One Design has taken part in the RORC Caribbean 600 and although undoubtedly slower than Comanche reaching in big breeze, Team Brunel does have the advantage of being highly manageable around the myriad of corners of the 11 islands on this course. The German canting keel Ker 56 Varuna VI has been shipped to the Caribbean to take part, making up a formidable trio of early entries for the IRC canting keel class and more yachts are expected to follow.

In 2015, the 70 foot trimaran Phaedo3 set the RORC Caribbean 600 multihull record in 33 hours, 35 minutes and 30 seconds and is back again following its completion of the RORC Transatlantic Race in November.

Phaedo3 will have hot competition for multihull ‘line honours’ with the MOD 70 Concise 10 and also the Nigel Irens 63 Paradox, which might struggle to keep up with the larger, lighter rivals, but Paradox has beaten both yachts under the MOCRA rating rule for the Rolex Fastnet Race and the Rolex Middle Sea Race.

This event will be the first 4-boat ‘offshore-showdown’ in the history of the Maxi 72 Class. Bella Mente lifted the RORC Caribbean 600 Trophy in 2015, having scored the best corrected time under IRC. Bella Mente will be joined by Jethou, Momo and Proteus. All four yachts are capable of blistering pace in trade wind conditions and a high speed match race will make for thrilling racing. Joining the four Maxi 72s will be more hot competition from Irving Laidlaw's Rolex Maxi Yacht Cup champion Highland Fling XI which has the waterline length and a planing hull, capable of taking on the Maxi 72s. Overall winner of the 2015 Transatlantic Race, the RP63 Lucky will revel in the fast conditions. TP52 Sorcha and Piet Vroon's Ker 51 Tonnerre 4 had an epic battle last time out and both will be back this year. Sorcha won last year's 600-mile match race with Tonnerre 4 and placed second overall.

The RORC Caribbean 600 has always attracted the majestic classic yachts that frequent the Caribbean and this year includes the the Alfred Mylne designed 65ft sloop, the Blue Peter which was built in England in 1930 and called the Blue Peter for luck, after the 'P' flag, which all Howth racing sailors will know is used as the preparatory signal before starting a race.

Following the release of the final list of entries, RORC Chief Executive Eddie Warden commented “The impressive number of high performance yachts is a superb endorsement for the RORC Caribbean 600. No offshore race in the world commands such a level of competition as we are seeing entered for the 2016 race. The unique 600 mile race course circumnavigates 11 islands, with guaranteed trade winds and creates spectacular sailing conditions and that is the big attraction."

RORC Commodore Michael Boyd will also be taking part in what will be his fifth race, navigating for RORC Admiral Andrew McIrvine on his Grand Soleil 46 Bella Donna. Micheal said of the race: “The RORC Caribbean 600 has beautiful weather and spectacular nature; whales and turtles are often sighted. At night conditions are warm with impressive meteor showers lighting up the sky. All of these elements make this a very special race. Everyone that takes part has their story from the race. Sailors come from all over the world with aspirations of winning their class, but win or lose, over the past seven editions of the race the competitors have told the RORC what a memorable experience it has been. I am sure those feelings will continue.”

The race starts and begins in Antigua and competitors expect fresh (but warm!) 15-22 knot easterly trades and big seas for the duration.

Jennifer Guinness was one of the most accomplished Irish amateur sailors of her generation. Her death at the age of 78, after a gallant battle with cancer, brings to an end an extraordinary life in which she was sometimes unwillingly in the full glare of public attention, yet she was never happier than with a few friends and family in an informal and private setting, whether at home or on a boat.

She was of a very maritime family - her father Colonel J B Hollwey was a leading figure in Dublin Bay sailing and also a noted pioneer in shipping, with his company Bell Lines being in the forefront of the international development of containerisation. Many of her earliest memories were of sailing from childhood, and she became experienced in every aspect of the sport, whether as helm or crew, inshore and offshore, racing and cruising.

With marriage to merchant banker John Guinness of Howth, she moved across Dublin Bay to live on the Baily and sail from Howth Harbour, and their shared love of sailing found fulfillment in the Folkboat Sharavoge, the McGruer 43ft yawl Sule Skerry, and then their final boat together - the Hood 50 ketch Deerhound. While she was a very supportive consort for John in his roles as Commodore of Howth Yacht Club and then Commodore of the Irish Cruising Club, for Jenny Guinness the real point of it all was to go sailing as much as possible, whether it was racing at every opportunity in a variety of boats – she was a noted helm in the International Dragon Class - or cruising extensively, with their range of places visited in detail taking in Spain to the south and the far reaches of Scandinavia to the north, all cruised in notably well-planned and competent ventures.

Her competitive instincts were also taken offshore – in 1975 she was a member of the Irish Admirals Cup team as crew on board Clayton Love Jnr’s Swan 44 Assiduous, and in 1986 she was a crewmember on Robin Knox-Johnston’s 60ft catamaran British Airways in a successful challenge for the Round Ireland Record.

She and John also occasionally raced Deerhound offshore, though the big ketch was essentially a cruising boat. But this didn’t restrain them from hard-driving of the ship, and a classic memory of Jenny Guinness is of a stormy cross-channel race from Howth to Holyhead in 1977. As was usual when the boat was racing, she was on the helm, but it was the crew’s decision to set the mizzen staysail.

In a fierce squall, the entire mizzen mast setup, complete with billowing staysail, collapsed around her. Yet not only was she miraculously unscathed, but she blithely continued steering, helming on from amidst the ruins of the rig while crisply telling her husband and the rest of the crew that as they had decided to put up the extra sail, it was their job to tidy up the resulting mess - she meanwhile had some serious sailing to do, as the wind was by now hitting gale force, they’d a race to finish, and the mainmast was still standing and working well. Having started the race as a ketch, Deerhound finished it as a sloop.

It’s a cold wet night in May 1986, but the big catamaran is on track to a new Round Ireland Record, the helmsman has the boat going sweetly, and in the tiny cabin Jenny Guinnness decides that the watch below need a little whiskey as a warmer, and Josh Hall and Robin Knox-Johnston agree. Photo: W M Nixon

For most of their life together, she and John lived in the characterful old family home of Ceanchor House overlooking Dublin Bay and the Wicklow Hills – it was a centre of informal and generous hospitality on an often international scale, frequently and boisterously filled with sailing friends from near and far. They were also raising a family, and while there had been extreme challenges such as her kidnapping in 1986, underneath her sometimes shy exterior she was one very tough person, and she emerged successfully, and if anything stronger than ever, from experiences which would have defeated a lesser individual.

Her most devastating test came in 1988, when John was tragically killed in a mountain-walking accident in Snowdonia. The gallantry of her response to this personal disaster was inspirational. In time, she was back afloat, and moved on from Deerhound to two boats which were very definitely an expression of Jenny Guinness’s view of sailing, as they were formidable performance cruisers, both called Alakush - the first a very speedy Humphreys-designed Sovereign 400, the second a handsome Sabre 426.

Sailing these fine boats, she continued her stylish progress across the sea in racing and cruising, supported by family and a loyal group of friends who relished the challenge of sailing with a determined skipper whose exceptional ability at the helm was well matched by her creative skill in the galley. Her zest in the sport was restricted only by the onset of arthritis in her latter years, which she found exasperating, but battled in typically doughty style.

She faced the final challenge of terminal cancer with the same gallantry. She was determined to see Christmas 2015 despite medical expectations to the contrary, and she did it in style for a “truly magical” Christmas in the midst of a large party of extended family and close friends, most of them shipmates too. This well-lived life has now come to an end, and our heartfelt condolences go to Jennifer Guinness’s husband Alex Booth, her family and her many friends.

WMN

#HowthYC - Ocean adventurer Paddy Barry will give a talk at Howth Yacht Club this Friday (22 January) on the North Atlantic Crescent, a voyage he undertook with friends from Ireland to Greenland via the Faroe Islands and Iceland.

All are welcome to the clubhouse for the evening of adventurous cruising tales hosted by the HYC Cruising Group. For more information contact the club via the website HERE.

As climber Gerry Galligan explains in his blog, Paddy Barry and his regular crew were planning a sailing-climbing trip to Iceland, East Greenland, then back to Iceland again on his boat Ar Seachrán. 

Paddy’s trip was part of a wider journey of island-hopping from Ireland to Greenland and back by way of the Hebrides, Faroes and Iceland; re-tracing the likely voyages Irish monks such as St. Brendan made, centuries ago. This overall project was given a name, The North Atlantic Crescent Adventure 2015; our scope, one leg of it, was to sail to Greenland, attempt some climbs, ideally first ascents, of the coastal peaks of the Lemon mountain range, before sailing 240 miles down the coast to the village of Tasiilaq.

The seven were skipper Paddy, blacksmith and rifle-man Ronán Ó Caoimh, myself, and four old IMC hands: Frank Nugent, Harry Connolly, Peter Gargan and Paddy O’Brien. More from Galligan here.

Model Yacht Racers finally got a nice day yesterday, Sunday 10th January with a gentle breeze and a fresh but not too cold day in Howth YC for our first racing day of 2016 writes Gilbert Louis.
We had all the usual suspects of the Dublin fleet with Fergal, Des, Stephen, Jeff and I.
We completed 10 races after a bit of training and tuning together on the water.
Jeff came on top with his trusted reinforced Britpop design. Reliable, well-tuned and sailed well he was the man to beat!
Des was the most improved skipper with his homemade Alternative design. He was well up there winning one race but always on the money. Well done Des !
Fergal was back with his now older design Disco but with a new set of sails from New Zealand. And they look the bizneez too ;-) Great to see Fergal back on the water.
Gilbert was out trying a new deeper rudder and new set of sails on his trusted wooden Goth XP from Frank Russell and had a mix day with few handling mistakes. He had a certain liking for the weather mark he rounded a little too close a few times, so much so that he decided to ‘hug’ it for most of the last race while the others were battling for the last race of the day!
Stephen out with his V9, a Ian Vickers design who also had a mix day tasting line honours but missing the last 2 races due to some electrical glitches…
Despite each racing different designs, sails, and their own tuning the sailing was close with all 5 boats arriving close together. You make a mistake! Then you ‘pay cash’, the punishment is instant and with boats of similar performance it is hard to catch up so everyone has to be on top of their game.
We will be back in two weeks for the next round!

Circumnavigate round Ireland on a cruising yacht and you will experience an abundance of spectacular coastal scenery, uninhabited islands, ancient settlements, incredible sea birds and endless marine mammal wildlife. Cruising Ireland’s coastline will have you exploring sheltered harbours, sailing past exposed headlands and anchoring up in friendly ports. No wonder around 50% of Ireland’s sailors are cruising and leisure sailors and no wonder Ireland has so many incredibly adventurous cruising sailors.

To celebrate the cruising sailors of Ireland and our coastline the ISA are organising the 'inaugural ISA Cruising Conference' at Howth Yacht Club on February 20th 2016, with inspiring speakers and interactive talks that will benefit experienced sailors and new comers alike. Adventure sailors Eddie Nicholson and his crew will be the key note speakers, opening up the talks for the day with tales and a picture show of their adventures in Greenland and back to Kinsale on a Najad 440, Mollihawk’s Shadow.

There will be talks on weather charts and grib files with Met Eireann and experienced Yachtmaster Instructor and pilot John Leahy. Inspiration for “Women on the Helm” comes from adventure sailor and writer Daria Blackwell and an insight in to the activities of the Coastguard, Marine Institute and CAI and what they do for Irish cruising sailors. ICC Publications editor and experienced navigator Norman Kean will share is knowledge to help us see the potential pit falls of electronic navigation, while Zoologist and Yachtmaster Instructor Niall MacAllister give us some tips on whales and wildlife hotspots and protocols. Ever needed crew to help with long and short journeys, or just wanted to head out for a short spin? Round the world sailor Pat Murphy will give us a few tips on finding and looking after new crew.

A break out session of groups is scheduled to discuss personal cruising experiences, problems and discoveries and a summary of the sessions will be presented with an open discussion. Every delegate will be entered in to a draw for a full set of Offshore Gear courtesy of Union Chandlery, plus copies of ICC Publications thanks to the Irish Cruising Club and every delegate will head home with a goodie bag. The generous time given by these experienced speakers, sponsorship by Union Chandlery, support from Cruising Association of Ireland and the Irish Sailing Association have made all this possible.

ISA Members are €10 (Non Members €15) and a Club buffet lunch will be available for €15 (plus Eventbrite booking fee) you can book directly here 

Contact Gail MacAllister, ISA Cruising Development Officer directly with any queries 086 2214724 [email protected]

 

As a vehicle sport dominated by weather conditions, sailing can be difficult enough to explain to the outside world. But when you factor in the constantly changing situation which is youth sailing, where crew dynamics of size, weight and attitude can change with bewildering rapidity, it becomes very complex indeed.

Yet despite the inevitable fluidity, Ireland has long had a vibrant youth sailing scene. And it’s on a roll right now, with the Irish crew of Doug Elmes and Colin O’Sullivan returning this week from the Youth Worlds on the other side of the planet with a Bronze Medal in the 420, while the bonus is that all of the team of four came home from the championship with very solid performances recorded. Liam Glynn returned with 15th out of a fleet of 66 in the Laser Radial Boys, while Aisling Keller was tenth out of 55, also in Laser Radial. W M Nixon tries to capture the mood of the moment, and the machinations behind the 420 crew’s special success.

It could well be that there was only a window of opportunity of maybe six months or even less in which Doug Elmes of Kilkenny and Colin O’Sullivan of Malahide could have been realistically in the frame for a podium place racing the 420 in the Youth Sailing World at Langkawi in Malaysia in the final week of 2015.

The 420 is a gallant little boat, but young sailors outgrow them very quickly. And then before you know it, they’re too old anyway. Elmes, who is now 17, and O’Sullivan, who will become 17 in March, have known each other, and got on well together, since they first met while racing Optimists when aged eleven. But it wasn’t automatic that they should team up to sail 420s, instead of choosing the usual solo junior sailing career path of going on to maybe a year or two in Toppers, and then on into the Laser.

Sailing pundits bewail the fact that our junior sailing is dominated by single-handed boats. But the logistics of campaigning a two-person boat on the national and international circuit at junior level are extremely challenging. The most basic problem is that neither crewmember will have a driving licence. Thus they’re totally reliant on family or organisational support for boat movement, and in the end it almost invariably means that two families will be totally involved.

The level of mutual goodwill required across the generations and between at least two households is extremely high, so it’s not surprising that ISA Coach Ross Killian – he marks ten years as a fulltime sailing coach this year – reckons that a realistic figure for the Irish 420 fleet with genuine potential hovers around the 15 mark, and the going is good when the number of serious participants gets up to 20 boats.

A sailing paradise. The Portuguese and Turkish crews revelling in the perfect 420 sailing conditions at Langkawi.

The paradise island provided one problem - getting the boats delivered there had a significant “Just In Time” aspect.

In such a small fleet, inevitably the volunteer administrative work will fall to a few. You get a notion of the compact size of the national operation when you realize that the Irish President is John Elmes of Waterford Harbour SC in Dunmore East, who also happens to be Doug Elmes’ father, while the Class Secretary is Joan O’Sullivan of Malahide who – you’ve guessed it – is Colin O’Sullivan’s mum.

Yet as regular Afloat.ie watchers will be well aware, on Tuesday when the successful team returned to a rapturous welcome in Dublin Airport, the 420 crew found themselves immediately wrapped in the tricolour and the Howth YC burgee, and it’s in the Howth club tomorrow that they’ll be officially welcomed home.

This neatly illustrates the fact that the Irish 420 focal point is a moveable feast. For now at any rate, it’s Howth which happens to be providing the national centre. It is currently coming up with the numbers, and in club coach Graeme Grant it has one very talented individual who inspires the young people to reach the level at which they can be taken under Ross Killian’s wing for the international circuit.

Colin O’Sullivan holds the mast in place as the 420s are rigged and Doug Elmes turns his skills to sorting a technical problem on the boat, which was delivered to the venue at the last moment. Photo: Ross Killian

But it’s a matter of catching the talent when all the stars have the potential to be in alignment, and in the final analysis it’s the young crews themselves who have to show the spark that will be fanned into the flame of success.

Of the successful crew, it was Colin O’Sullivan who first felt the 420 urge. He remembers it very well. He was thirteen-and-a-half at the time, and though he could have had another couple of years with the Optimists, he was growing tall, and so he got involved with 420 sailing, crewing for Ewan McMahon of Howth.

Meanwhile Doug Elmes – who had been concentrating on sailing Optimists at Crosshaven with the RCYC - was soon feeling the same way, and he in turn teamed up to move on to 420 racing with Bill Staunton of Skerries, which tells us something of the truly national nature of Optimist racing.

But when we look at the 420 in detail, it’s to realise that while she’s a very serviceable little boat, the fact that she’s precisely and only 4.2 metres long makes it inevitable that with today’s bigger and faster-growing youngsters, their 420 compatibility period can be very brief indeed, and they have to keep an eye out for potential new crewmates.

Thus when MacMahon and Staunton outgrew the 420, Elmes and O’Sullivan decided to become a crew, and their debut together was at Wexford in September 2014. They’ve been fine-tuning their act ever since, with the busy little class at Howth providing the stage, and they make for a very balanced duo in a boat which is central to world youth sailing.

The virtue of the 420 is that she’s as small and economical as you can get while still having the crew on a trapeze. The boat has been around for more than half a century now, having been designed by Christian Maury to a specification devised by the chief instructors at a sailing school in southwest France. But as she’s one of those boats that looks much better when fully alive and sailing well than she does on the plans, it took a long time in the 1970s before anyone in Ireland would accept the contention, put forward by Sean Clune of the National YC, that the 420 was the only way to go for Irish junior sailing.

The International 420 is one of those boats which looks better when she’s sailing (below) than she does on the plans (above)

But for those young people who wanted a boat which was minimum hassle to maintain yet providing a proper grown-up sailing experience, the 420 was the future here and now, and it has the advantage of being family-friendly in that, though you’ll need the help of your folks to get the boat to a championship destination, they won’t have to shell out on a 4X4 for a towing vehicle, while it has long been a class tradition that at major international events, the host nation has to provide boats.

So all you have to do is provide the talent and the dedication……Well, there’s more to it than that, of course. But for now, let’s just celebrate the fact that a young sailor from Ireland’s only significant inland town which is not an official waterways port, teamed up moreover with another young sailor who learned his skills on the unique Broadmeadow Water at Malahide, has done the business on the sunny seas of southeast Asia with coolness and style.

The job done – with their Bronze Medal secured, Doug & Colin get together with coach Ross Killian.

It was classic stuff. As Graeme Grant says of their development: “They have been always improving results and skills through dedication and hard work”. And as Ross Killian attests: “They’re just so cool under pressure, and they balance each other”.

As Colin O’Sullivan loyally asserts, it’s Doug Elmes who is the techno-genius. They arrived in the island of Langkawi to find paradise and perfect sailing conditions – but no boats. There’d been a foul-up in the fleet delivery schedule. The boats arrived at the last minute, so the trial race was the very first sail. But Doug was in his element putting it all together, and their boat was as race prepared as any in the fleet.

As the series progressed, it came down to the wire for the Bronze Medal between Ireland and Australia. In the crucial race, it was the Australian coach who commented to Ross Killian on the stylish coolness of the Irish crew, and watched in open-mouthed admiration as Elmes carried off a mark-rounding with such skill that he picked up three places at a stroke.

They may have won Bronze, but copious use of sunblock meant the Irish crew were distinctly un-bronzed when they got home to Dublin Airport. Photo: W M Nixon

Thereafter, the commentators on the shared coach-boat were favourably impressed by the way the Irish kept the race and their place under quiet yet total control, avoiding the temptation to throw everything away by being unnecessarily greedy.

The day after their return to Ireland, we spoke with Colin O’Sullivan after he’d done some serious catching-up on sleep, yet with typical dedication had dragged himself out into the winter night for his routine session at the gym. The big question with a crew of two is how much they talk during a race. The answer in this case is that since teaming up less than 18 months ago, the Elmes-O’Sullivan crew have upped the talk level with every event, yet it has become more focused each time out. “At Langkawi, we were exchanging information all the time, the talk was constant” says O’Sullivan with a chuckle, “but you definitely wouldn’t call it chat”.

At the conclusion of a good Youth Worlds for Ireland are (left to right) Liam Glynn, Doug Elmes, Aisling Keller, Colin O’Sullivan and Ross Killian.

Bringing it all back home. In Dublin Airport are (left to right) Ross McDonald (Howth YC), Doug Elmes, Colin O’Sullivan and Berchmans Gannon (Commodore, Howth YC). Photo: W M Nixon

The traditional midwinter festive air of Dublin Airport returned briefly but vividly today when Ireland’s team in the Youth Sailing Worlds came home in triumph from Langkawi in Malaysia bearing the Bronze Medal won in the International 420 by Douglas Elmes (17) and Colin O’Sullivan (16).

There to provide a rapturous welcome were family and friends, together with Howth YC Commodore Berchmans Gannon and HYC Honorary PR Officer Ross MacDonald. For although Elmes is from Kilkenny and started his sailing at Dunmore East, while O’Sullivan is from Malahide, it was through the intensely-focused 420 class in Howth, under the inspired tutelage of coach Graeme Grant, that the two have made their way towards a podium place in the Worlds.

The ISA Academy’s project to send a team to the Youth Worlds has paid off handsomely, for in addition to the Bronze Medal in the 420, Aisling Keller came home with tenth place overall in the fleet of 50 in the Laser Radial Girls, while Liam Glynn was 15th in the 66-strong Laser Radial Boys.

W M Nixon’s Sailing on Saturday blog this weekend will analyse the story behind the medal success, and there’ll be a special reception for the medallists and their families in Howth YC on Sunday.

“You’ve done us proud….” Welcoming home the Bronze Medallists at Dublin Airport are (left to right) Ross MacDonald (Howth YC), Douglas Elmes & Colin O’Sullivan, and Berchmans Gannon (Commodore, Howth YC). Photo: W M Nixon

#HYC - Howth Yacht Club's 2015 AGM concluded last Thursday night (10 December) with the appointment of Commodore Berchmans Gannon and the new general committee.

The commodore outlined his plans for the year ahead including the modernisation of the club's articles of association, as well as the importance of a membership drive, and making better use of the club's buildings as it introduces a large number of new members.

Commodore Gannon will be joined in office by Vice Commodore Emmet Dalton, who will chair the sailing committee and oversee many of the sailing sub-committees.

The HYC website has more on the latest changes to the club's board and general committee HERE.

Howth Yacht Club's Aoife Hopkins got in her final race practice at the local frostbite racing before heading off to Rio this week for the first Olympic Laser trial event to decide whether she or Annalise Murphy represents Ireland at the 2016 Olympics. 

Storm Desmond finally moved away and left behind a perfect Sunday morning for Laser racing in Howth YC. The 14 knot westerly made it the most benign sailing day of the entire series to date and, with only three of the scheduled ten races completed, three starts were planned to try and catch up.

Hopkins demonstrated her current good form with three emphatic wins, during which she kept pace with the Standard Rigs and challenged for the overall lead. 

21 Lasers were at the starting line well before the 10.45 first gun and race 1 got away on the first attempt, helped by the ebb tide in Howth Sound holding the fleet back from the line. Dan O’Connell (173184) found the front of the Full Rig fleet by the first mark and then held the lead until the end. The race was sailed over a course consisting of a single triangle and a WL lap, with the usual third lap dropped to ensure that the three race schedule would not delay the sailors from theirSunday dinners or domestic duties.

With an immediate turnaround after the last finisher of each race, the second and third races started cleanly with only a single individual recall to mar proceedings. After being runner-up in the opening two races, Stephen Quinn (90)started getting to grips with his new radial cut Standard Rigmainsail, the first in the Howth fleet, and lead for the first four and a half legs of the third race. However Dan was never far behind and manoeuvred into the lead on the last run to take the gun and achieve his hat trick for the day.

In the Radials, Aoife Hopkins (205770) got in her final race practice before heading off to Rio this week for the first trial event to decide whether she or Annalise Murphy representsIreland at the 2016 Olympics. Aoife demonstrated her current good form with three emphatic wins, during which she kept pace with the Standard Rigs and challenged for the overall lead. The fleet wishes her well in Rio.

The 4.7 fleet saw very close racing but Shane O’Brien(201566) showed his superiority in the conditions on the day to take all three wins. Shane completed the pattern of the same winner over the three races in the Standard Rig, Radial and 4.7 classes.

The fleet were back ashore at 12.30 with the three races bringing the number sailed to date in the Winter Series up to six. Three more are planned for next Sunday, Dec 13th, to bring the weather challenged 2015 season to a close.

The fleet will not be resting for long and racing will resumeafter the Christmas festivities on January 1st. The long running New Year’s Day race will get 2016 underway, firstgun at 12.00 noon, before the Spring Series kicks off on January 3rd.