Sailing at the Harken 29er Grand Prix in Torbay this past weekend
Credit: UK 29er Class Association
Rian Geraghty-McDonnell and Nathan Van Steenberge were first juniors and sixth overall in the Harken 29er Grand Prix at Royal Torbay Yacht Club this weekend, as Yachts & Yachting reports.
Winds and rain on the Saturday gave way to Champagne sailing conditions yesterday (Sunday 24 March) for the National Yacht Club pair who placed third in Tralee Bay the weekend before, and topped a welcome Irish contingent in Devon.
MacDara Conroy is a contributor covering all things on the water, from boating and wildlife to science and business
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The 29er is a one-design double-handed, single trapeze skiff for youth sailors.
There is an active class in Ireland, just one of the 38-countries from across all continents now racing the high-performance skiff.
The 29er is one of the latest dinghy classes to arrive in Ireland and has a 50/50 split between boys and girls.
The class like to describe the boat as "The most popular skiff for sailors who want to go fast!".
Derived from the Olympic class 49er class and designed by Julian Bethwaite the 29er was first produced in 1998.
Two sailors sail the 29er, one on trapeze.
The 6.25-metre high rig features a fractional asymmetrical spinnaker; a self-tacking jib decreases the workload of the crew, making manoeuvres more efficient and freeing the crew to take the mainsheet upwind and on two-sail reaches.
The 15.00 m2 spinnaker rigging set-up challenges crews to be fit and coordinated, and manoeuvres in the boat require athleticism due to its lack of inherent stability and the high speed with which the fully battened mainsail and jib power up.
The 74kg weight hull is constructed of fibreglass-reinforced polyester in a foam sandwich layout.
The fully battened mainsail and jib are made from a transparent Mylar laminate with orange or red Dacron trimming, while the spinnaker is manufactured from ripstop Nylon.
The mast is in three parts - an aluminium bottom and middle section, with a polyester-fibreglass composite tip to increase mast bend and decrease both overall weights, and the capsizing moment a heavy mast tip can generate. Foils are aluminium or fibreglass.
The ILCA, formerly known as the Laser, is the most produced boat in the world, with 220,000 units built since 1971.
It's easy to see why the single-handed dinghy has won the title of the most widely distributed boat of all time.
The Laser is a one-design dinghy, the hulls being identical but three rigs that can be used according to the size and weight of the sailor.
The class is international, with sailors from 120 countries. The boat has also been an Olympic class since 1996, being both the men's and women's singlehanded dinghy.
Three rigs are recognised by the International Laser Class Association (ILCA):
The queen of all fleets. Denis Doyle's legendary Moonduster was the flagship of Irish offshore racing for twenty years. Doyle's enthusiastic support moved the Round Ireland Race into the international league, and his regular participation set performance standards which greatly enhanced the event.
Doyle owned four different Moondusters in his long career. His last boat, arguably the best known, the varnished Frers, was sold to Norway around 2005 where she is still sailing but not in the same state of repair as she had been in Crosshaven.
Ireland's Sailing and Boating Magazine
