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Displaying items by tag: Eskild Ebbesen

#ROWING: Kenny McDonald, the world champion indoor rower in the 40 to 49 lightweight class, will launch a bid on Sunday to break the Irish and world records in this class. McDonald, of Shannon Rowing Club, and Dubliner Jonathan Doyle, the man he replaced as champion earlier this year, will take each other on at St Michael’s Rowing Club in Limerick at 1 p.m. The Irish record  is 6:21.7, held by Philip Healy, and the world record time is 6:16.8. It was set in January at the European Championships in Copenhagen by five-time Olympic medallist Eskild Ebbesen.

McDonald, who is a garda and an instructor in the Garda College in Templemore, set a time of six minutes 24.5 seconds when he won his title in Boston in February, but felt he could have gone faster. “The race went well, it was nice to win it, (but) I was going out at the back of my mind to break the world record. It went well for 1200 metres but the wheels started to come off at that stage. The last 800 metres I lost the focus. I definitely had a faster time in me.”

Published in Rowing

The GP14 is a popular sailing dinghy, with well over 14,000 boats built.

The class is active in the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and parts of north-eastern USA, and the GP14 can be used for both racing and cruising. 

Designed by Jack Holt in 1949, with the assistance of the Dovey Yacht Club in Aberdyfi. The idea behind the design was to build a General Purpose (GP) 14-foot dinghy which could be sailed or rowed, capable of also being powered effectively by a small outboard motor, able to be towed behind a small family car and able to be launched and recovered reasonably easily, and stable enough to be able to lie to moorings or anchor when required. Racing soon followed, initially with some degree of opposition from Yachting World, who had commissioned the design, and the boat soon turned out to be an outstanding racing design also.

The boat was initially designed with a main and small jib as a comfortable family dinghy. In a design philosophy that is both practical and highly redolent of social attitudes of the day the intention was that she should accommodate a family comprising parents plus two children, and specifically that the jib should be modest enough for "Mum" or older children to handle, while she should perform well enough to give "Dad" some excitement when not taking the family out. While this rig is still available, and can be useful when using the boat to teach sailing, or for family sailing, and has some popularity for cruising, the boat is more commonly seen with the full modern rig of a mainsail, genoa and spinnaker. Australian boats also routinely use trapezes.

GP14 Ireland Event Dates 2023

  • O'Tiarnaigh (Apr 22-23) Blessington Sailing Club
  • Ulsters (May 20-21) East Antrim Boat Club
  • Munsters (Jun 17-18) Tralee Bay Sailing Club
  • Leinsters (Jul 7-9) Dun Laoghaire Regatta
  • SOYC (Aug 19-20) Rush Sailing Club
  • Nationals (Sep 1-3) Sutton Dinghy Club
  • Hot Toddy (Sep 30-Oct 1) Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club

 

At A Glance – GP14 Dinghy Specifications

Crew 2
Draft 1,200 mm (47 in)
Hull weight 132.9 kg
LOA 4.27 m (14 ft)
Beam 1.54 m
Spinnaker area 8.4 m2
Upwind sail area 12.85 m2

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