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Displaying items by tag: Laser North Americans

#LaserRadial - National Yacht Club sailor Loghlen Rickard was a close second in the Laser Radial at this past weekend’s Leinsters in Rush.

It’s the latest strong result for the youth sailor who recently took his talents some 7,000km west for the Laser North American Championships in Vancouver, Canada.

Racing was held over for days of varied light to medium winds at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club on English Bay from 21 June. 

Loghlen started strong with a bullet in race one, and had eight top-five finishes in the 12-race event.

The NYC sailor and Fort Lauderdale’s Sophia Reineke came off the water after 12 races tied on points in first and second respectively.

But a controversial protest saw them both disqualified from the last race, resulting in Vancouver’s own two-time Olympian Luke Ramsay taking the top step of the podium and Loghlen slipping to sixth after discards.

Nevertheless, it was a remarkable showing from the Dun Laoghaire stalwart, who also recently competed at the Radial Youth Euros in Poland.

Published in Laser

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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