Tom Dolan is Afloat.ie Sailor of the Month (Offshore) for April

3rd May 2017

Afloat.ie Team

Tom Dolan (right) on the podium in France after his third place in the Pornichet of the French Solo Offshore Championship. He is pictured with Valentin Gautier and Pierre Chedeville Credit: Bruno Bouvry

Tom Dolan from County Meath may still seem to some to be the new boy on the block for Irish participation in the small boat solo sailing scene centred around France. But he has clocked up quite a few miles now with dogged determination towards the Mini Transat from his base in Concarneau in the heart of Brittany, and success is within reach.

In late April it all came good with the 300-mile opening race from Pornichet of the French Solo Offshore Championship, when Dolan recovered from what he ruefully recalls as “a mediocre start” amongst the 52-strong fleet, with further angst when his group stalled while those to the south kept slipping along.

Then the new breeze filled in to give him such a boost that at one stage he was overall leader by nearly a mile, but in the final three miles to the finish his sparring partner Pierre Chedeville (the winner last year) was on the right side of a shirt to take the lead. Then from the next group, Swiss sailor Valentin Gautier took a flyer to the north and had was ahead of both leaders at the line, but Tom Dolan’s podium place in a race of this calibre makes him a worthy Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month (Offshore) ” for April.

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Tom Dolan, Solo Offshore Sailor

Even when County Meath solo sailor Tom Dolan had been down the numbers in the early stages of the four-stage 2,000 mile 2020 Figaro Race, Dolan and his boat were soon eating their way up through the fleet in any situation which demanded difficult tactical decisions.

His fifth overall at the finish – the highest-placed non-French sailor and winner of the Vivi Cup – had him right among the international elite in one of 2020's few major events.

The 33-year-old who has lived in Concarneau, Brittany since 2009 but grew up on a farm in rural County Meath came into the gruelling four-stage race aiming to get into the top half of the fleet and to underline his potential to Irish sailing administrators considering the selection process for the 2024 Olympic Mixed Double Offshore category which comes in for the Paris games.