#dennisconner – Ireland will send three teams to New York this week for the Dennis Conner International Yacht Club Challenge in New York Harbour.

Two Howth Yacht Club teams for the event are HYC's U25 team; skippered by Joeseph Murphy with Gordon Stirling, Cillian Dickson, Harry Cronin and Cian Manly and secondly: HYC Red skippered by Simon Rattigan with Rob Kerley, Luke Malcolm, Harry O'Reilly and Sam O'Byrne.

A Royal Cork team includes David Lane, Sinead Enright, Clem McElligott and Wendy McElligott.

Nineteen teams of amateur club sailors from 14 nations will come together from August 15th to 17th to compete in the Sixth Dennis Conner International Yacht Club Challenge organized by the NY Harbor Sailing Foundation. The races will take place on boats borrowed from the Manhattan Yacht Club, one of the largest community sailing organizations in the country with more than 900 members and will take place at North Cove, the mega yacht marina in Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan.

The three-day spectacular will feature a daily series of hour-long races in New York Harbour. All of the races will begin and end at Manhattan Yacht Club's floating clubhouse located in the harbor, near Ellis Island.

The NY Harbor Sailing Foundation was founded in 1994 and organises sailing programs in the harbor such as Operation Optimist, a junior sailing program for kids.

Founded in 1987, Manhattan Yacht Club has reintroduced recreational sailing to the harbour after a 60-year absence.

The 19 teams from 14 nations include:

- Manhattan Yacht Club (United States) - 2 Teams
- Club Universitario de Buenos Aires (Argentina) - 2 Teams
- Norddeutscher Regatta Verein (Germany)
- Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron (Australia) - 2 Teams
- Nissan Marina Tokai (Japan)
- Howth Yacht Club (Ireland) - 2 Teams
- Fenerbahce Sailing Club "Team Goblin" (Turkey)
- Royal Cork Yacht Club (Ireland)
- Societe Nautique de la Baie de Saint-Malo (France)
- Royal Norwegian Yacht Club (Norway)
- Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club (Bermuda)
- Royal Danish Yacht Club (Denmark)
- Cercle de la Voile de la Societe Nautique de Geneve (Switzerland)
- Shanghai Boat and Yacht Club (China)
- Royal Cape Yacht Club (South Africa)

#howth17 – The weekend's Howth 17 Footers Championships was won by Brian & Conor Turvey's 'Isobel'. Winning two of Saturday's four races and following a lengthy protest hearing between 'Deilginis' and 'Rita' (the latter then being disqualified from Race 2) afforded the Isobel team a victory by one point from Peter Courtney's 'Oona' with Ian Malcolm and crew of 'Aura' collecting their bronze medals for 3rd.

The event coverage included a first race aerial vid by Skypixels featuring the fleet (above). 

Ian Sheridan's 'Erica' couldn't replicate their winning form from the previous evening, but were popular winners of the Handicap Trophy. Following praise for the Class Captain Mary Faherty and her running of the event, Commodore Brian Turvey thanked the race management team and their National Race Officer Scorie Walls for an excellent series, relaying particular thanks for the great work of the mark-laying teams following their swift action in the last race in managing a 60 degree wind direction shift.

#modelyacht – Once again there is a model yacht skipper representing Ireland at the up-coming 2014 IOM European Championships held in Lake Garda in September writes Gilbert Louis.

Jeff Kay from Howth Yacht Club will be flying the Irish flag once again. Jeff is not new to this level of competition as he represented Ireland at a number of European and World Championships over the past few years.

Probably the most experienced skipper in our fleet, Jeff has a wealth of experience in sailing (laser, squib, cruiser/racers, etc...) as well as in model boats too. He brings a great technical knowledge to the fleet because of his experience over the years of racing often in the top 20 at international events.

One important element to understand! The IOM fleet at international level is the most competitive fleet there is in model boats. It includes a number of World class sailors from national, international, World, European champions and Olympic sailors too. The fleet also includes professionals in the sailing world: be TP52 campaigns, VOR, skiffs, even from the America's cup teams, like Ian Vickers (OT USA). That is not counting on the countless top model boat skippers. The top 20 includes over 50% of former EU or World champions. So it is no break in the top 20.

Jeff will be racing a Britpop, a boat designed by Brad Gibson (AUS) which has taken the IOM world by storm. A still relatively new boat design with chines. It has already won numerous podiums around the world as well as Gold medals a the last EU and World champs. So it is already proven design – so proven in fact that a lot of other skippers will race one too.

In June Jeff travelled to the UK for one of their event and he managed 4th behind 2 former World champions and ahead of a 3rd. Not a bad performance considering we don't get as much on-the-water time as our friends across the Irish sea do. We are wishing Jeff the very best for the Europeans.

But that's not all Ireland will also be represented in the umpires as our national rules guru Gordon will be part of the teams of umpires and jury there to make sure everyone stick to the ISAF RRS rules. Gordon is also experienced as he has already been called upon for his services at previous international model boat events in France and the UK. Gordon is our most experienced model boat official in Ireland and we are lucky to have someone like him in the fleet. So on behalf of the Irish IOM fleet, Thank you Gordon and wish you the best in Italy in September.

Athough we may be small in number and not as known as other fleets, we do have quality and passionate skippers in the fleet. Jeff, Gilbert, Brian and Neill have been racing across the pond to the UK numbers of times, even winning some of the events. Team Ireland finished 2nd behind Scotland at the recently launched Celtic Trophy, and the Irish flag has been flying at a number of past European and World championships.

For the past 2 years we enjoyed a slow but progressive growth in the fleet with the addition of our Northern Ireland fleet to which Brian O'Neil has been instrumental in setting up and growing. As a result model boats are now sailing again on the Belfast Waterworks, thanks to the support of the county council who welcomed the activity and helped the club to setup. Sure we even had for the first time ever an Irish sailor a the UK A class National Championships with Brian entering the event despite being completely new to this class and with very little experience with his newly acquired A class. And it is not all about racing we have Gilbert who loves multis: he has a replica of Jet Service II of the 80's and a Mini40 trimaran which was based on the 60 Orma trimaran of the 90's. In Cork we even have a 1/10 sailing replica of Illbruck a VOR60 (have you done the math yet? Yes that's a 2.4m long boat, controlled by radio control). We also welcomed the return of Stephen Kay to the class who took a break for a few years – Like his brother Stephen is an experienced sailor and will be pushing top Irish skippers too.

For now on behalf of the Irish IOM National Class Association we thank you Jeff and Gordon and we wish you the best.

#420 – This year's Ulster and Connacht 420 dinghy champions Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove finished 20th at the World Championships Travemunde, Germany.

Seven Irish crews went to the 199–boat 420 Worlds; five mens teams and two ladies. Following three days of qualifying races, two Irish teams qualified for the gold fleets, one in each mens and ladies.

The Howth YC pair posted their best result, a ninth, in the final race to earn a coveted top twenty overall in the 57–boat gold fleet.

Irish Gold fleet ladies team sailed by Clidohna Ni Shuilleabhain and Jil McGinley were 38th in the 42–boat gold fleet.

Full event website here

#malahide – Malahide Yacht Club's annual cruiser regatta, sponsored by SPAR, attracted 24 boats in three classes who sailed two back-to-back races on courses set by PRO Neil Murphy in light southerly to south-easterly breezes.

Class 2 and 3 did windward-leeward courses while the White Sail class completed Olympic triangle courses and the day saw visiting Howth boats top the table in each class on both handicaps.

Class 2 was headed by Impetuous (Noonan & Chambers) from Sunburn (Ian Byrne) in 2nd and MYC's XtraTime (Michael & Paul Arthurs) 3rd.

Vincent Gaffney's Alliance II had two race wins to take the Class 3 honours, ahead of Blue Jay (MYC Youth Team) on ECHO and Scandal (Brian McDowell) on IRC. Scandal was 3rd on ECHO and Goyave (Russell Camier) was 3rd on IRC.

The White Sails division saw a comfortable overall win by David Sargent's Indulgence ahead of Toughnut (Simon Revill) and Spellbound (Graham Burrows).

#sportsgrants – Two of Ireland's biggest yacht clubs shared top awards in a €500,000 payout to 16 Irish Sailing Clubs in the Government's Sports Capital Programme announced last week. The full list of beneficiaries is below.

Dublin's Howth Yacht Club and National Yacht Club both got €77,000 in the Governments main vehicle for supporting the development of sports facilities and the purchase of non-personal sports equipment.

National Yacht Club Commodore Larry Power says his Dublin Bay club, one of the top six yacht clubs in the country, 'is privileged to receive this high level of funding from the Sports Capital Programme'. Power says the money will be spent on an upgrade of club boats to 'enhance the NYC status as a local community club in Dun Laoghaire'.

In Howth, Commodore Brian Turvey says the north Dublin Club 'intends to use this valuable and most welcome grant on the development of keelboat sailing', youth academy and HYC's own 'introduction to sailing' programme.

The Minister of State for Tourism & Sport Michael Ring announced grants of €40.5 million for 880 sports projects across the country last week, sailing getting a small share in the divvy up. The Sports Capital Programme is the Government's main vehicle to distribute funds. The facilities being funded range from small-scale equipment grants, to regionally significant centres of sporting excellence.

2014 Sports Captial Grant Allocations

Crookhaven Harbour Sailing Club € 32,000.00

Glandore Harbour Yacht Club € 12,000.00

Clontarf Yacht and Boat Club € 29,063.00

Dublin Bay Sailing Club € 23,778.00

Howth Sailing and Boating Club € 33,635.00

Howth Yacht Club € 77,000.00

Malahide Yacht Club € 44,149.00

Sailing in Dublin € 25,000.00

Skerries Sailing Club € 10,552.00

Swords Sailing and Boating Club € 11,646.00

National Yacht Club € 77,902.00

Tralee Bay Sailing Club € 20,000.00

Wexford Harbour Boat and Tennis Club € 56,000.00

Blessington Sailing Club € 24,000.00

Bray Sailing Club € 18,000.00

Greystones Sailing Club € 9,000.00

#420 - Howth Yacht Club's Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove remain dominant in the 420 class nationally following their convincing first-place performance at the 420 Connachts last weekend.

It was a double podium finish for the North Co Dublin club, too, as Ewan McMahon and Colin O'Sullivan placed third out of the 16 entries that raced in "perfect sailing weather" off Spiddal in Galway Bay.

Howth Yacht Club has more on the story HERE.

#hyc – Three well known Irish half tonners make the journey to Saint Quay Portrieux in Brittany for the Half Ton Classic Cup representing Howth Yacht Club. The Evan's brothers "The Big Picture", Jonny Swan and Jim Freyne's "Harmony" and Dave Cullen's "King One" will all head in search of trophies in this highly competitive class event which is expecting 32 entries.

Following a total refurb and optimisation and following her recent second place in the ICRAs, Michael and Richie Evan's beautiful MG30 will hope to repeat her form to try and clinch the top trophy. A sister ship to the current holder, Nigel Biggs; Checkmate, these two boats should provide some very close racing for the spectators.

Harmony, incidentally a previous Half Ton Classic Cup champion in 2007 when owned by Nigel Biggs, could be a dark horse and is still one of the fastest half tonners around. Now looking fantastic following a refit, she may suffer a little from lack of time on the water.

King One makes its third trip to the Continent in an effort to take the prize. Placing third in 2009, lying second in 2011 when she broke her mast and lying 4th last year when a black flag ruined any chances, she has some unfinished business!.

The Half Ton Classic Cup, sponsored by Euro Car Parks, kicks off with a practice race on Monday followed by 11 races to be held up to Friday next.

You can follow the event here

#etchells – Consistency is king and Bill Hardesty and crew of Stephanie Roble, Taylor Canfield and Marcus Eagan have earned the 2014 Etchells World Championship by sticking to a steady plan for success. Ireland's title bid, that included an eighth place in race three, was cut short after the sole Irish entry in the 90–boat fleet. Howth's Burrows family, sailing Bedrock, only completed the first five of the nine race series in New York. Full results here.

Hardesty's plan was formulated 6 months ago, when he put together his young team consisting of Match Race World Champion Taylor Canfield and top women's match racer Stephanie Roble—25-year-olds eager to dedicate themselves to a worthy goal. Add in top trimmer Marcus Eagan and the team was complete.

After a tough series in Miami last winter, Hardesty made the decision to train in his home waters of San Diego where he had top talent and similar conditions to the worlds venue in Newport. "Tom Carruthers, Vince Brun and Bruce Nelson helped us up our game through sail testing and boat tuning," Hardesty said. But they didn't focus solely on boat speed. "We worked on evaluating risk management to make good decisions, define it, buy into it and follow through; that all came together at this regatta and helped with our consistency."

Hardesty further commented that having three elite match racers on board "gave us an advantage at the start through our time and distance timing and laylines, which made starting easier and more comfortable. We only had one bad start, that was the race we finished 20th."

Commenting on his third Etchells World title, Hardesty said: "This was one of the toughest to win; the level of sailing was at its highest. But it's very exciting. I love the class, I love the boat."

Winning the last race was Peter Duncan, who had local ties. "We didn't sail a particularly great series," said Duncan. "Our expectations were certainly higher, so this was great to end on a high note, which is better than the alternative." Duncan's crew included former world champion Jud Smith and Thomas Blackwell.

Ante Razmilovic, Chris Larson and Stuart Flinn finished second overall, with 2013 world champion Marvin Beckman, Steve Hunt and Ezra Culver in third.

Competitors will look forward to the 2015 Etchells Worlds which will be held in Hong Kong, hosted by the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, November 1 to 7, 2015.

Final Top-10 Results

Place, Sail Number, Boat Name, Skipper, Hometown, Race 1, Race 2, Race 3, Race 4, Race 5, Race 6, Race 7, Race 8, Race 9, Total (not including worst score)
1. USA 979, Line Honors, Bill Hardesty, San Diego, 2-2-20-1-4-5-13-15-96/DNC 62.0
2. HKG 1333, Swedish Blue, Ante Razmilovic, London, U.K., 3-6-8-44-14-19-3-31-13 97.0
3, USA 1378, The Martian, Marvin Beckmann, Houston, 8-3-11-5-15-46-32-7-19 100.0
4. USA 1308, KGB, Senet Bischoff & Ben Kinney, Larchmont, N.Y. 10-20-25-52-1-31-2-9-15 113.0
5. USA 1372, Aretas, Skip Dieball, Beaver Dam, Wis., 38-13-4-19-7-17-1-61-23 122.0
6. CAN 1396, Hank Lammens, Norwalk, Conn., 1-8-1-12-16-7-47-49-42 134.0
7. AUS 1383, Triad, John Bertrand, South Yarra, Australia, 4-10-5-28-27-23-53-43-2 142.0
8. USA 1376, Arethusa, Phil Lotz, Newport, R.I., 9-18-6-96/BFD-52-9-12-37-8 151.0
9. USA 1137, La Tormenta, Shannon Bush, Refugio, Texas, 26-16-31-37-6-21-6-16-66 159.0
10. USA 1404, Lifted, Jim Cunningham, San Francisco, 42-4-32-40-50-3-4-25-10 160.0

#hyc – Howth Yacht Club's new Sportsboat initiative attracted J24s, J80s and the visiting 1720 European championships for its first outing last weekend.

 Well known cJ24 skipper  Flor O’Driscoll and the crew of his J24 Hard On Port were the deserving overall Sportsboat Cup winners for 2014 and were awarded the Romaine Cagney Trophy.

Impressively, they did not count a result worse than second for the regatta and won half of the races. The popular winners have been stalwarts of the J24 class in Ireland who also have won several IRC titles in the well campaigned boat. They were only delighted to be taking another piece of silverware out of the Pale to Munster.

The  cup was sailed in three days of glorious sunshine and light winds. Suncream and water were some of the most important parts of all crews’ kit every day as temperatures were consistently over 20 degrees. Water was especially important after many of the competitors were burning the midnight oil each evening. Racing was successfully completed on Sunday which incorporated the 1720 Europeans, the J24 Easterns and the Sailfleet J80s. The race officers did exceptionally well to get the full schedule of races completed on both race courses without any delays. The challenging conditions and a big shift meant that the last race of the day on Saturday for the 1720s had to be abandoned to avoid it becoming a lottery. PRO Derek Bothwell’s mantra that “It is better to have no race than a bad race” was a wise one. In any case, there was ample time to make it up on Sunday morning to get all eight races in.

1720s made a welcome return to HYC after over a decade of absence

The 1720 Europeans came down to the wire and was decided in the last race to by the slimmest of margins. After a match race with Denis Murphy’s Aquatack in the last race, Peter O’Leary’s Jacobs Bar emerged victorious by just half a point overall to defend his title from last year. Not far behind the leading pair was a surprise performance from Kenneth Rumball on INSC.ie who rounded out the podium places. Maybe the Dun Laoghaire based team should travel to the events more frequently and the rest of the Dublin based fleet will too. The top performer from outside of Ireland came from Tom Forrestor-Coles and his crew from the south coast of the UK who finished fourth, just two points off the podium.

1720 winners. Pictured Adam Hyland, Cathal Cottrell, Peter O’Leary, Jamie Donegan & Youen Jacob

O’Learys title defence was impressive as earlier this year the boat was in a sorry state after being abandoned for years in a field in Baltimore. Left under a tree with the hatch open the boat was covered in leaves, dirt and the hull was full of water. Before they began the resurrection Cathal Cottrell even joked “We thought of entering the boat in the Chelsea flower show instead of the Europeans when we found her, and we nearly did”. After only rigging a new mast on Thursday night and splashing for the first time early Friday morning, they got off to a relatively slow start but definitely got into their rhythm on Saturday and hauled in Aquatack before conclusion on Sunday. Seventeen year old Adam Hyland was a welcome addition to the crew and O’Leary praised the young talent in his acceptance speech.

Eoin O’Fearghail

When the wind dropped on Saturday for the J24s and J80s racing was as rapid as Elephant Polo. The wind direction chopped and changed to the point where PRO Richard Kissane decided to abandon and restart Race 2. Whereas it didn't suit those doing nicely at the time, it was the sensible decision. The restarted race got away smartly in a bit more breeze allowing the fleet to get all scheduled races under their belts and home in time for tea and tiffin....and after-sun!

Sunday's racing was brought forward an hour to test those who were out the night before. A few cups of Blue Nun did nothing to slow up Flor O'Driscoll and his team who put in a stellar Sunday performance.
Lough Swilly's "Bandit" lived up to its name by putting in a sweet port tack start in Race 5. Open-jawed, the rest of the fleet took some time catching!

Overnight leader Stefan Hyde on Hamilton Bear had a wobbly start to the day but finished off the weekend with a well deserved bullet. In the last they weren’t able to push Hard On Port down the fleet enough in the last to snatch the overall title at the death, so it was second overall for them. Howth Yacht Club’s Under 25 Keelboat Team on Eurocarparks Kilcullen rounded out the podium in third place.

J80 winners. Joan Harris, Gillian Guinness, Elaine Taylor, Sally Watson & Linda Darbey

In the Sailfleet J80 class Gillian Guinness and her ladies team took the title ahead of Mossy Shanahan. In the closely fought class young Ewan McMahon finished a close third. With most of the fleet trading blows Gillian and her crew were very consistent and eked out a lead which meant they had the series wrapped up with a race to spare. There were even sightings of wine and other delights on the sail home each day on board. The bulk of the fleet from second to fifth place were separated by only four points. Exactly what you want and expect from such evenly matched one design racing.

Howth would like to thank all the competitors who made the event as good as it was and Edward Dillon who generously sponsored some prizes. We hope to have everyone back and even more classes involved when we run the event again in 2016.

Full Results here: http://hyc.ie/results