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A fleet of 14 Flying Fifteens raced the annual Facet Trophy, traditionally held on the Saturday of the August Bank Holiday weekend. Given the time of year and the beckoning of holidays away from the “big smoke” it was a good turnout and for the second successive Saturday, the regulars were joined by John Lavery and David O’Brien sailing 4071 – maybe a warmup for the Nationals at the start of September?

Race Officer Declan Traynor had a nice westerly to use for the course and set two Windward-Leeward courses each of three laps. As is generally expected of the Fifteen fleet both starts were competitive but starting in the second race became a bit more chaotic when a number of boats mistimed their attempts to acquire a pin end start and a number had to go back and restart. The decision to favour the pin was effectively determined by the inshore side being established as the better side of the beat during the first race.

Chris Arrowsmith & Cormac Bradley (3920) were early casualties in the first race with a broken tiller extension, the universal fitting breaking. They sailed to shore, got a replacement from Chris’ Melges 15, and made it back in time to start the second race.

Thus this column can’t comment on the first race at all, other than to report a finishing order of Lavery, David Gorman & Chris Doorly (4099), Neil Colin & Margaret Casey (4028), Alastair Court & Connor O’Leary (3753), and Peter Murphy & Ciara Mulvey (3774).

For the second race the tide was ebbing that bit stronger, so the logic for the beat should have been to stay in shore, out of the tide. That, in addition to the inshore track being the preferred side of the beat, led to a log jam at the pin end. David Gorman & Chris Doorly (4099)led the charge to the pin end with a number of other boats not far behind. Gorman got there too early, as did the others leading to a log-jam of boats trying to restart and a phalanx of boats approaching the point from further down the start line.

That was probably the end of the excitement for the day as the rest of the race was conducted under reasonably genteel conditions, albeit with a number of marks getting touched and a boat getting the course wrong by underestimating the number of laps for the second race (heard ashore afterwards).

Interesting the same five boats shared the finishing places in both races, with Neil Colin & Margaret Casey (4028) leading the second race for the majority for its length. Their yellow spinnaker was consistently chased by the blue spinnakers of Lavery, Gorman, Court, and Murphy (P). Down the last run, Colin went inshore initially before gybing while the four chasers gybed immediately at the spreader mark. From behind it looked as though Colin’s gamble was going to be expensive, but as the final approach was made to the leeward mark, he appeared to be safe. Unbeknownst on the water, (from my perspective)there was a tight battle going on between Lavery, Gorman and Court for the podium places.

After Colin, the finishing order was Court, Lavery, Gorman and Murphy.

This resulted in a first countback being resolved in Colin’s favour by way of winning the second race, as he and Lavery each scored 4 points. The second and third places were also resolved on countback with Court getting the advantage over Gorman.

Facet Finish — Pat Shannon of Facet Jewellers (left) congratulates Alastair Court and Connor O'Leary, who secured third place in the annual Flying Fifteen Facet Trophy after countback separated the podium.

The Bronze Fleet prize went to Louise McKenna & Hermine O’Keeffe (3960) while Adrian Coopper (3896) took the Silver Fleet prize.

Post racing, prizes were awarded by Pat Shannon of Facet Jewellers on the balcony of the National Yacht Club. MC, Tom Glavin, Dun Laoghaire Flying Fifteen Class Captain for 2026, thanked Pat for his continued support of the class by way of the day’s trophy and prizes.