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Displaying items by tag: Tonner

#BOATS FOR SALE – A Quarter Ton yacht for sale at €8,000 is 'a great club racer' that 'normally cleans up in Class 3', that's according to a new advertisment on Afloat's Boats for Sale site this morning. The yacht Manzanita has been 'reduced to sell' by owner George Kenefick, the recently crowned All Ireland Sailing Champion.

Earlier this month a similar yacht, a Bolero 26, Bandit, sold quickly prompting seller Ian Travers to write and record his thanks for the interest generated from the advert on the Afloat boats for sale site (cost €10).

Quarter Ton racing looks like a popular style of sailing for the current times. A leading example, Supernova took top prize at this year's Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta and both the 2011 ICRA Nationals and the Sovereign's Cup championed the small boat cause.

The latest addition to the boats for sale site is 'a steal for the price' says Kenefick who makes the 1977 vintage craft sound like an ideal winter project for a Dublin Bay or Cork Harbour campaign in 2012.

The boat had a new 'Formula' rig in 2006 and new mainsheet track in 2008 with new Harken cam cleats.

The boat was resprayed in 2005 but now needs a few touch ups.

All sails are from McWilliam Sailmakers. A mast head kite and a small kite are inlcuded.

The boat is lying in Hamble UK on a Trailer but you can see photos of her on the full advert here.

 

Published in Boat Sales

She maybe old but she's still a fast one. Don't let the fact that a 33-year old local yacht took top prize from a combined fleet of 420 competitors at Ireland's biggest sailing regatta, the Volvo regatta in Dun Laoghaire yesterday.

The three sailors involved in the campaign, skipper Ken Lawless, Sybil McCormack and Pat Shannon have invested in a three year campaign to get the quarter tonner Supernova up to speed and it was only after a season of modifications last year that they found the real go button on the Dubois Starflash design.

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David Baddeley of Volvo (left) and Alan Moore of Spirit (back row) present the award to the Supernova crew (from left) Ken Lawless, Sybil McCormack, Edel Harvey, Pat Shannon and Daryl Balf

In a hard fought battle for honours in the biggest class of the regatta Supernova of the Royal Irish Yacht Club overhauled the 2009 Volvo trophy winner, Hard on Port (Flor O'Driscoll) of the Royal St. George Yacht Club by five seconds to win yesterday afternoon's final sixth race for Class III and lift the overall Volvo Trophy for the best performance of the regatta.

In fact, Supernova won from O'Driscoll by only the narrowest of margins and only after the third tie-break was applied to the arch rivals.

Both boats had equal points plus three wins and two second places apiece. Both had also  discarded a second place and so the class, and the 2011 title, was decided on  countback and who won the last race.

In a season of successes for the vintage Dubois Starflash design Dun Laoghaire sailor Lawless and his partners Sybil McCormack and Pat Shannon have already won class honours in June’s Lambay race. The quarter tonner has taken overall honours too in Dublin Bay Sailing Club's first series this season.

Part of the reason for the success has been a winter of overhauls to the 1978 design including extra downwind sail area and improved stability with the relocation of its floorboards. The improvements brought about better performances downwind, especially in light airs.
"We found stability was more important than increasing draft. In anything over 15-knots she proved very difficult to sail, her big rig makin her very skittish" Lawless told Afloat.ie
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Supernova takes a tack

The vintage boat from the old IOR handicap days is in fact a carbon copy of the famous 1979 Admiral's Cupper two tonner Police Car, a boat that has held huge appeal for Lawless.

"We were second to Hard on Port at this regatta two years ago when they won boat of the week so there was intense rivalry today but we knew we could do it!" Lawless said last night.
Published in Volvo Regatta
In one of the busiest racing weekends of the Irish sailing calendar a vintage Quarter tonner sailed by six friends lifted the top prize in Dun Laoghaire. We report on Supernova's success. In a weekend of extremes for the biennial 'big one' we have reports, photos and video from Day one, two, three and overall. Plus how one VDLR competitor skipped the ferry and sailed over, from Wales in a dinghy. We have the DBSC likely first series winners too. On Friday, John Twomey and his crew qualified in Weymouth for next year's Paralympic Games. Yesterday in Croatia Sophie Murphy took a race win at the ISAF Youth Worlds for Ireland. From a lead at the halfway stage Peter McCann ended up eighth at the Oppy worlds in Portugal.We have less serious Optimist action from Crosshaven too.

In offshore news, the Transatlantic Race 2011 Nears a Finish, and RORC yachts that headed West did best in the St Malo from Cowes race. Ireland's entry in the Tall Ships race, Celtic Mist, is safely in Scotland. WIORA starts this week in Clifden, thirty boats are expected.

Two top Cork performers are in Cowes for this week's Quarter Ton Cup.

In other boating news, rower Siobhan McCrohan won bronze at the World Rowing Champs in Lucerne, Kiteboarding debuted in Dun Laoghaire. There were Medals for Irish Kayakers at Athens Special Olympics.

And finally after a Elaine 'Shooter' Alexander is set for hero's welcome this week as she becomes the first woman from Northern Ireland to circumnavigate the island of Ireland.

All on our home page this morning, thanks for your interest in Irish Sailing and Boating.

Published in Racing

Following Monday's report on the Irish championship winning yacht Tiger (Neil Kenefick) sailing in the Quarter Ton Cup in Cowes next week a second Royal Cork Yacht, Eamonn Rohan's Quarter tonner 'Anchor Challenge' is also heading to the Solent. Her crew is made up of Eamonn, Nigel Young, Sam Hunt, Ian Travers and Mick Liddy. This boat won the event in 2009 so she has form. Watch this space!

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Anchor Challenge is heading for Cowes. Photo: Bob Bateman. Scroll down for more.

 

Published in Racing

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)