Displaying items by tag: Arabella

8th December 2011

Royal Irish Yacht Arabella Takes Three RORC Awards

The Royal Ocean Racing Club in London has awarded Niall Dowling's Royal Irish yacht Arabella (a J111) the Alan Paul Trophy for consistent high performance in IRC, the Serendip Trophy for best series-produced Yacht in IRC, and the second place medallion in IRC overall for the 2011 RORC season.

Published in RORC

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Dowling and Smyth to Co-Skipper Royal Irish Yacht Arabella in Fastnet Race

With less than a month to go the Fastnet race Niall Dowling and Nick Smyth will be co skippering the J111 'Arabella' under the burgee of the Royal Irish Yacht Club. 'Arabella' the first J111 in Europe has had an extensive offshore campaign since winning the Hamble Spring Series in April. The Fastnet Race is the focus of their 2011 campaign.

'Arabella' currently lies 2nd out of over 300 boats in the RORC Overall Series behind Piet Vroon"s Kerr 46 Tonnerre de Breskens. Crew for the Fastnet will include Class 40 sailor John Cunningham, GBR Olympic Finn coach Matt Howard, Volvo sailor Craig Bowie. Also on board Dowling's long term friend, skipper and double handed campaigner Michael Boyd a veteran of many Fastnet campaigns the first of which was on the Irish Admirals Cup team in 1983 will further bolster the offshore experience. The dynamic duo of Peter Knight and Aaron Cooper both amongst the elite graduates of the Solent Keelboat Academy will cover roles of bowman and navigator respectively.

When asked about the campaign Dowling said "this campaign is all about getting a group of friends that used to sail a lot together back out there. Nick and I used to race dinghies, instructed sailing together in Dun Laoghaire and campaigned offshore. Nick has been doing lot of competitive team racing but until this campaign the last offshore race we did together with Michael was the Round Ireland race in 2006 ... . The RORC Eddystone Race in May definitely showed there were no cobwebs as Nick drove most of the way back from the lighthouse topping out at 22.6 knots and averaging mid teens! John although normally based in the US has been doing a fellowship at Cambridge University and has been on board since the boat arrived". Irish Olympic Finn sailor Tim Goodbody and the National Yacht Club's now Brighton based boat designer Jonny Coate are also regulars on board. For the Fastnet there will be a competitive fleet of 77 boats in IRC2 where 'Arabella' currently lies 2nd in the series behind RORC commodore Andrew Mc Irvine's First 40 'La Reponse'.

Published in Fastnet

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About the 29er Skiff Dinghy

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.

About the ILCA/Laser Dinghy

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):

ILCA 4: sail of 4.70m2

ILCA 6: sail of 5.76 m2

ILCA 7: sail of 7.06 m2