John Malone and Emmet Sheridan's two-handed JPK 10.30 Loinnir won Saturday's ISORA Dún Laoghaire–Pwllheli race overall on IRC after a long passage across the Irish Sea.
According to proviiosal resyults on the race ytracker, the Lough Ree Yacht Club/Royal Irish Yacht Club entry also won the IRC Two-Handed division in a race in which short-handed crews were particularly prominent, with five of the eight competing boats sailing two-handed.
The fleet left Dún Laoghaire at 8am in grey, hazy and light conditions for what developed into a lengthy passage to the Welsh coast.
Leading Out – Two-handed JPK 10.30 Loinnir leads out of a grey and hazy Dublin Bay after the 8am start of Saturday's ISORA Dún Laoghaire–Pwllheli race. Photo: Afloat
Loinnir Beats ReQuest By 3m 39s
Loinnir crossed the finish at 20:18 after an elapsed time of 12 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds. Her corrected time of 12:32:35 gave Malone and Sheridan victory over the fully crewed JPK 10.30 ReQuest.
Nathan, Justin and Darren Burke's National Yacht Club ReQuest crossed just a minute later at 20:19. Her elapsed time of 12:19:57 corrected to 12:36:14, leaving only three minutes and 39 seconds between the two sisterships after more than 12 hours of racing.
The two-handed Kerr 32 Hijacker, sailed by Grzegorz Kalinecki, took third overall on corrected time of 12:46:10, 9m 56s behind ReQuest.
Welsh entry Finally was fourth on 13:22:45, followed by another two-handed boat, Barry O'Connor's Elan 31 Katanca, on 13:26:47.
Five Of Eight Race Two-Handed
The scale of the two-handed presence was underlined by the separate IRC Two-Handed results, where Loinnir headed Hijacker, Katanca, Paradox and No Xcuse.
That meant five of the eight boats competing in the cross-channel race were racing with just two crew.
Loinnir's overall victory was particularly notable given that ReQuest, her closest rival on corrected time, was fully crewed.
Long Irish Sea Contest
The provisional tracker results show how close the leading boats remained after the long crossing. While Loinnir and ReQuest finished within a minute of each other, Hijacker crossed at 20:28.
The remaining finishers stretched well into Saturday evening, with Finally finishing at 21:07, Paradox and No Xcuse at 21:10, and Katanca at 22:39.
The result adds another element to the closing stages of the ISORA season, although with multiple discards applying in the series scoring, the effect of Saturday's race on the overall standings will depend on the final series calculations.
