#ucd – UCD sailing team lie second in La Rochelle, France this morning buoyed up by a string of consistent results that sees them chasing overall leaders Canada by four points after xx race sailed so far in the  Student Yachting World Cup.

UCD, captained by Cathal Leigh Doyle came second in six of the races so far which has tightened up the event leaderboard after discard. Yesterday UCD got out of the blocks with a second and another second and then a 13th.

Although lack of funding has already led to the withdrawal of two teams from next week's competition, Team Ireland under captain Cathal Leigh Doyle is celebrating a deal with sponsor Miagen in the nick of time.

A last minute  deal for the team has given them a boost for their world title assautl, a  title won previously by the Cork Institute of Technology.

The annual regatta attracts the top student sailors from around the world including Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the USA.

Heavy weather is due later on this week.

 

 

#sywoc – An all-Ireland squad represents us in the Student Yachting Worlds getting under way in La Rochelle in France with the practice race today, the team drawn from Sligo, Mayo, Belfast, Wicklow, Dublin, Cork and Antrim.

At the end of an international season which has seen some of our best-known sailing stars hit the heights only to miss the podium at the very end, the amount of hope which is being invested by the Irish sailing community in the national college team is unreal. But that's the way it is at this level of sailing, and in their season-long buildup to the big event in the Bay of Biscay, the team of ten have been getting every sort of encouragement, advice, training and assessment from the best sources available.

The French started this series back in 1979, and it has been gradually growing in stature ever since. It's their baby, so it's their own affair if they persist in calling it a "yachting" event. But everywhere else has long since thought of our sport as sailing, so it's pure Gallic pig-headedness to persist with the clunky yachting tag, particularly for a series which highlights the sailing stars of the future.

The teams are provided by the winners of each country's national intrcollegiate championship, and way back in 1988 Trinity, after winning the Irish title, went on to become the first Irish world champions. This year, UCD did the business on the home front back in March by winning the Irish title in Dun Laoghaire, breaking a long and successful stranglehold by CIT.

The Cork sailors had a great run of it in the Worlds, with second in 2007, first in 2009 when Nin O'Leary was skipper, fourth in 2009, and a remarkable third in 2011 with George Kenefick the skipper –it was remarkable as the draw had given CIT one of three boats that were definitely not up to standard.

UCD are captained by Cathal Leigh-Doyle from Ballincar in Sligo, while the crew skipper is Aidan McLaverty. Others in the lineup are Barry McCartin (tactician), Ben Fusco, Simon Doran, Theo Murphy, David Fitzgerald, Ellen Cahill, Isabella Morehead and Alyson Rumball.

In addition to supervised workouts in UCD's performance gym, they've been intensively training afloat under the watchful eye of Nin O'Leary, John Downey, Marty O'Leary and Maurice "Prof" O'Connell. And Olympic helm Annalise Murphy, who was contemporary at UCD with many of the crew in First Year, but took time out for her sailing challenge, has been getting together with them in support.

Racing is from tomorrow through November 3rd. It's a fleet event with 14 national teams including the US, Canada and Australia, with France's Euromed team the defenders. The programme includes inshore, offshore and coastal races, and early indications are of lightish north to northeast breezes in the racing area. But a lot can happen weatherwise in the last week of October, and we can be sure many Irish sailing fans will be closely watching meteorological movements off La Rochelle for the next seven days.

GILDED YOUTHS BECOME GOLDEN OLDIES

The Dun Laoghaire boats Clarion and Felise in Svolvaer in northern Norway in 1970, crewed almost exclusively by young sailors recruited through the university sailing clubs in Dublin

Encouraging the university sailing scene is a demanding business, as the turnover in talent is so rapid. The notion of the desirability or otherwise of three years degree courses is sensibly being challenged by the Slow Learning Movement. This informal international grouping hastens to tell us it's not about slow learners as popularly perceived, but is about tailoring and shaping courses and the time allotted to suit individual needs.

It's a decidedly luxurious ambition for sure, and hardly a runner in a time of economic recession, even if a popular way of passing the time before the financial wheels begin to turn again is to find some college offering post-grad courses with student support grants.

Nevertheless, even with four year courses, plus the addition of post-grad input, no sooner does a college sailing club begin to get a winning squad together than they've either graduated or been sent down. Sometimes a winning team finds itself so seriously and suddenly de-populated that truly creative solutions have to be found to define just who is or is not a student, and at what college.

It's only a matter of time before they offer degree courses in dealing with the challenge of keeping college teams up to strength and together. American universities are way ahead of the curve with their sports scholarships and many other sorts of imaginative funding. But it's not generally realized that, back in the day, Dun Laoghaire was a world leader in encouraging university sailing.

This happy state of affairs developed as the Irish Dinghy Racing Association grew in strength in the late 1940s and through the 1950s. The Firefly class was at the core of dinghy sailing in Dublin Bay, and the three waterfront clubs were in a dynamic interaction with UCD, TCD and RCSI.

For those of us from universities less favourably set up in their sailing, it was a real revelation to come to Dun Laoghaire and find UCD well placed with the National YC, Trinity in comfort at the Royal St George, and College of Surgeons in situ at the Royal Irish.

The system worked very well. All the Dublin-based university sailing teams were in the front rank of top level competition with British colleges, the only international competition available in those days. And student life being more leisurely in those days, the undergraduates added significantly to numbers competing at summer events like Dinghy Week.

The arrangement was of course a matter of enlightened self-interest by the powers that be, as it introduced each waterfront club's senior sailing members to young and energetic potential crewmen and crewwomen. There's many a golden oldie offshore racing or cruising skipper about Dublin Bay these days who got his or her first taste of big boat sailing thanks to the introductory services indirectly provided though having university sailing clubs using the big clubs' premises.

The system reached a high point in 1970 when two Irish cruising boats met up in Svolvaer in the Lofoten Islands off the far north of Norway. The locals were very impressed – they said it was the first time two sailing craft had been together in the harbour in fifty years, for this was long before the Arctic's current popularity as a cruising destination.

One of the boats was the 13-ton sloop Felise, owned by Ninian Falkiner, Commodore of the Royal Irish. The other was the 43ft Clarion of Wight, owned by Rory O'Hanlon, Commodore of the Royal St George. And in both cases, their crews were made up almost entireely of young sailor recruited through the university sailing clubs.

BIRDS ON BOARD

Barry Hurley en route to winning the double handed class of the Middle Sea Race this week

By the time this is on the screen, we'll know how Barry Hurley and Andrew Boyle finished in the two-handed division in the Middle Sea Race. (It's a win! - Ed) But meanwhile everyone visiting the Afloat.ie website recently has been enchanted by the photo of Barry sailing along in the race, and getting every encouragement from a visiting sparrow beside him, perched on the guard rail.

Of course it's not natural, it's not what sparrows would like to be doing, but inevitably we empathise with the little thing, and wonder what's going on in that particular bird brain. Inevitably, the assumption is that it will end unhappily - the bird must have been exhausted to take up such an unlikely perch in the first place. But such stories can sometimes have a happy ending.

Many years ago we were returning from the Isles of Scilly towards the Tuskar after an early-season cruise to Northwest Spain. It was mid-June, so migratory birds were still heading northwards, but even so it was a matter of wonder as we sailed along that a swallow found its way through the companionway and into the saloon.

My shipmate Davy McBride is one of those people with an easy affinity with wildlife, and instinctively he held up his arm and the swallow settled on it, very much at ease. The little bird eventually found a temporary nest under the sprayhood beside the warmth coming through the companionway.

We made our landfall on track, but were quite close to the Wexford coast before that evocative aroma of the land came out to us – as they say in Irish Lights when they have favourable conditions for working at buoys and other navigational aids, "the wind was off the grass".

Our little passenger, who had taken some drinking water, bestirred himself, fluffed out his feathers, and then took off with a cheerful chirrup. He didn't fly immediately to the nearby land, but did a couple of circuits of the boat before taking his departure towards Wexford. We remember that so clearly, years after supposedly more important details of the cruise to Galicia have long since faded away.

#youthsailing – Although funding issues have already forced the withdrawal of two international teams for the 2012 Student Yachting World Cup, Team Ireland from UCD is celebrating a title sponsor in the nick of time for next week's event in La Rochelle, France.

This Thursday, the Ireland Sailing Team - UCD travel to La Rochelle in France to compete at the 2012 Student Yachting World Cup. The annual regatta attracts the top student sailors from around the world including Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the USA.

After the team's last training session on Irish waters at the weekend UCD captain Cathal Leigh-Doyle thanked all the teams' official sponsors and formally announced that the team had finally secured a title sponsor "Miagen".

Cathal told Afloat.ie: "Miagen's signing today as the teams title sponsor adds perfectly to the great group of sponsors the team has secured over the last four months. We are delighted and honoured to have Dubarry, Martin Reilly Motors, CH Marine, Mast and Rigging Ireland, Meteo Forecasting Group, North Sails and Fotosail supporting the team. Without our sponsors we would not be going to this event"

Sponsorship though has been a worldwide problem for teams hoping to compete at this event this year as only as of two weeks ago, Team Scotland and Team Singapore had to pull out of the event due to lack of funding and sponsorship.

The UCD students earned the right to represent Ireland having won the Irish Student Yachting National Championships in Dun Laoghaire in March. The highly experienced team will not just be representing UCD but all corners of the island of Ireland. The 10 sailors hail from all over the country including Antrim, Cork, Down, Sligo, Wexford, Wicklow and Westport and between them share a wealth of skills and knowledge.

The team has been carrying out an intensive training program both on and off the water. The team has trained nearly every weekend under the instruction of their coaches Marty O'Leary and Maurice (Prof) O'Connell from North Sails. The Irish team have been training on board an A35 designed yacht in Dublin which is very similar to the "Grande Surprise" design boats which the team will be racing in La Rochelle, France. The yacht was generously lent to the team for their training program by the boats owners Joe Balfe and Joe McDonald to whom the team are extremely grateful. The team also frequently carried out two boat training sessions with another identical A35 named "Another Adventure" which was driven by Kenny Rumball.

Since last May the team has been searching for a number of service and financial sponsors in order to cover some of the costs associated with this very expensive regatta. The team contacted over 70 companies all over Ireland however the team were unable to secure a title financial sponsor until this week. A number of companies across Ireland agreed to provide their specific services free of charge which has covered a large proportion of the costs associated with the event and effectively enabled the team to travel to the event. Funding issues has been a worldwide problem for teams hoping to compete at this event this year as only as of two weeks ago, Team Scotland and Team Singapore had to pull out of the event due to lack of funding and sponsorship.

The team has also been carrying out an intensive fitness and strength training in UCD's High Performance Gym under the instruction of "". These training sessions were specifically designed and tailored for each team member specific roles on the boat.

Team skipper Aidan McLaverty competed at the event last year with Cork Institute of Technology when they came in third place and had this to say when asked how things were shaping up with a week to go:

"Training has gone really well, our coaches have been amazing and the team has really come together well. The next big issue for the team is the boat draw in France on Friday night. Last year we [CIT] had the worst boat in the fleet and it really affected our overall result - but we will have to wait and see!"

#ANNALISE MURPHY - The Daily Sail reports on a busy few days ahead for Irish Olympic sailing star and August Sailor of the Month, Annalise Murphy.

As previously covered on Afloat.ie, the 22-year-old - who scored Ireland's best Olympic sailing result in 32 years at London 2012 in the Laser Radial class - will today join the crew of the Omani MOD70 yacht Oman Sail-Musandam in Dublin Bay as part of the MOD70 European Tour, in celebration of the 19th anniversary of the Round Ireland speed record set by the late Steve Fossett.

Meanwhile, Murphy is also busy supporting her fellow UCD students selected as Ireland's representatives in the 2012 Student Yachting World Cup, to take place in La Rochelle, France late next month.

Murphy, who returned to UCD this week to complete the degree in science she deferred for her Olympic training three years ago, said: “I’m great friends with the guys on the team from either sailing or my first year in UCD.

"They’re a really strong team and have a really good chance of winning at the World Cup. I wish them the best of luck."

The 2011 Student Yachting World Cup came to a close yesterday after three more races. The winds were light giving the fleet a different challenge from what they had encountered for most of the week.

The previous day had seen the Irish team put in some good results and reign victorious in the protest room, which together had pulled them back into contention for a podium finish. Starting the final day of racing the Irish lay 3rd some distance behind the defending team, Solent, in 2nd but only one point ahead of the English team from Southampton. With the possibility of finishing behind both English teams adding fuel to the fire, the Irish hit the water with a point to prove.

In the first race the Cork boat made a perfect start right off the pin but as the wind slowly swung around to the right they could only manage to round the top mark in a tight group just outside the top five. A cleverly placed gybe threw the Irish back into the top five with the inside track coming into the leeward mark. A poor rounding at the mark however cancelled out their gains and they found themselves back in the midfleet fight. Another strong downwind before the end made up for some of their earlier mistakes and helped them sneak just past the English team to finish one place ahead of them in 5th.

As the second race started the wind was starting to drop below 10 knots. This made life difficult in the Irish boat with their old sails making it hard to keep pace with some of the newer boats. With this in mind most people would have ruled them out when they came round the first mark amongst the last three boats. The Irish team however were determined not to let their third place slip and in the downwind threw in gybe after gybe to keep themselves in the strongest breeze and sail right through the fleet to catch up on the leading pack. After rounding the bottom mark they immediately tacked out to the left side of the beat to get to some new pressure, which it seemed that only the Norwegians and themselves had seen. The Irish sailed around the boats ahead and rounded the next mark in fourth. They went on to complete this amazing comeback by leap frogging the French on the final beat to finish in 3rd place, four ahead of Team England and make it mathematically impossible to lose their 3rd place overall before the last race.

Unfortunately the two English teams had miscalculated and still thought Ireland a threat. The two decided to aggressively match race the Irish before the start and in the face of this English tag team were forced to bail out of their pin end start and duck the fleet as they started on port. In the now very light conditions the Irish found it hard to get back into the race and after sealing third place with second too far off, they took their foot off the pedal. Eventually they came round to finish somewhere midfleet, interestingly their only finish outside the top six over a very consistent week.

A delighted Irish team came ashore to receive third position overall. Despite their pre-event goal of winning the championship, third position was an incredible feat given the amount of setbacks the team had to endure with equipment. It never feels right to blame your boat but with daily breakages and the charter company agreeing that the boat should be sunk, there are times when it is justified.

The Team would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have helped get them here, namely their sponsors; Cork Institute of Technology, Bank of Ireland, Avis and Euro Car Parks. They of course would all like to thank there family and friends who have given their support to the team leading up to the event and all throughout the week.

And sure... This. is. it.

Today the SYWOC fleet endured some frustrating conditions with winds ranging from 2 to 22 knots in heavy swell. The race committee managed to get in only two races in the constantly changing winds, with one windward/leeward and a shortened coastal race. The Irish managed to fair well in the conditions despite, surprise surprise, breaking another piece of key gear, the jib halyard.

In the first race Team Ireland started well in the strong breeze but were unable to get into phase with the shifting conditions. The problematic boat seemed to be moving fast again today but some times just in the wrong direction. Coming onto the last downwind on the final lap of the course Ireland sat unhappily in 7th position. Halfway down the leg the wind managed to drop to almost nothing and shift 180 degrees three times. The race committee controversially decided to continue the racing with the French team leading. Ireland managed to gain only one place in the chaos but due to other teams being over the line at the start they were recorded as finishing 3rd.

The fleet had to wait over an hour to commence the second race. Eventually the race committee managed to get it all under way again when the wind picked back up to around the 15knot mark. This race was to be a coastal race of over 15 miles. With 30 seconds to go before the start, the Irish were dead set for a great start as the furthest boat to the pin. However the halyard holding up their jib went the way of many of their other boat parts and just gave way. The team did admirably to quickly set about switching the halyard and start without losing too much time. The Irish boat raced out to the right of the course and after 2 miles of clear air established themselves in second place going onto the next leg. Again the wind would not hold up and it dropped off just before their next mark rounding. Some of the problems surrounding dropping a jib and raising a spinnaker on the same halyard lead to the Irish giving up second place to the English team on the run. Fortunately the race was shortened and Team Ireland recorded their second 3rd of the day.

Back on land yesterdays problems resurfaced as they still had to go into the protest room to argue their right to redress in two of yesterdays races and for the jib incident in the second race today. The team's dashing legal representative Aidan McLaverty was the man charged with challenging the jury and race committee in the face of poor odds. In spite of this, twenty minutes after entering the dragon's den, Aidan emerged with victory in all three battles. The team's first place in the second race yesterday was reinstated and the two races that were affected by the gear breakages were scored with average points from the day. As a result Team Ireland have surprised many to come back from midfleet to sit in the top three going into the final races tomorrow. Sure that'll be that.

George Kenefick

The South of France is no refuge from strong winds, forcing the cancellation of the first two days of the student yachting world cup. We've heard from George Kenefick, Irish captain of Cork's CIT sailing team, this morning but and again he says it's unlikely there'll be sailing today. Meanwhile here's some nice downwind footage of the Irish team before racing was scrubbed yesterday.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 30th Student Yachting World Cup (SYWoC), and for the Irish Team, it was the first opportunity for some of them to check out La Rochelle. This year's Team Ireland consists of a joint effort between UL, LIT and UCC.

The team consists of Skipper Robert O'Leary(UCC), Cian Gallagher (UL), John Blake (UL), Dee O'Rourke (LIT), Lisa Dann (UCC), Caitlin Cuppage (UCC), Shane Newman (UL), Peadar O'Suilleabhain (UL), Jamie Donegan (UCC). The team will race with 6 or 7 up depending on the weather for the week, currently the forecast is looking quite light. Not what was expected for this time of year in La Rochelle.
After an early start at 7am this morning, the team travelled to the Societé de Regatis Rochelouies, the club which hosted the very first SYWoC in 1979. And which is SYWoC's base for the week.
A practice race was scheduled for 2pm, after a general briefing at 1pm. However, with wind gusting over 30kts, the race organisers decided that it was not worth risking the fleet with 6 days of racing ahead. The teams will be given an hour prior to racing tomorrow to put the final preparations on their 2010 SYWoC campaigns.
Team Ireland will hope to keep the title of a force to be reckoned with, after all the past 4 SYWoC campaigns for Ireland have had results of a 1st (Trinity - 2006), 2nd (CIT - 2007), 1st (CIT - 2008), 4th (CIT - 2009).