Strangford Lough's McKee & Smyth Win Flying Fifteen East Coast Championships

29th May 2017

Strangford Lough's Brian McKee and Ian Smyth were Flying Fifteen East Coast winners at the DMYC

The DMYC hosted the Flying Fifteen East Coast Championships on Dublin Bay at the weekend in tricky and unpredictable conditions and the PRO Stuart Kinnear and his team managed to get all the races completed.
Saturday was more like October with rain bucketing down, many crews spent much time bailing out the boats! Three races were sailed when the wind eventually came in from the WNW direction. Niall & Nikki Meagher sailing Fantastic Mr Fox were quickest out of the blocks and lead all the way around for their first Regional Championship race win. Brien McKee & Ian Smyth were second with Lee Statham & Andrew Paul (WHSC) third.
Race 2 Mathews & Poole (NYC) led the way from Statham with the Meaghers third and Mulvin & Beirne fourth. After several general recalls the black flag was introduced, the tide and strong pin end bias made it difficult to get over the line and most boats were able to fetch the weather mark on port tack. Eventually they got going and Gorman & Doorly (NYC) went left to lead for the first lap before gear failure forced them to retire. McKee took advantage to win the race from Mathews in second place and Statham in third. After a good soaking during the day the fleet were glad to head ashore and food and entertainment took place in one of the local Monkstown restaurants.

Sunday was warmer and dryer but the wind was very unsettled so the AP went up. Wind came in from the NE moving more Easterly and two Olympic triangle races were sailed. With the unpredictable wind it was also difficult to know how many races were going to be sailed so each race could have been the decider. In race 4 Mulligan led the way but McKee was close behind and took the lead on the second beat, this was how it finished with Gorman in third after some good sailing to move up the fleet. For the last race McKee was in pole position to win the event but Mathews was in with a chance also. McCleery & Dougan sailed a fantastic race to win comfortably from Mulvin in second, Mathews third and McKee’s fifth was enough to give him the title.

The next event takes place in Lough Neagh on June 18 and 18th.

Published in Flying Fifteen

Tagged under

About The Author

Afloat.ie Team

Email The Author

Afloat.ie is Ireland's dedicated marine journalism team.

Have you got a story for our reporters? Email us here.

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.