With gusts above 30 knots and spinning rain squalls, the 2022 49er and FX European Championships kicked off in Aarhus with all the top teams taking lessons from some new crews; including Ireland.

In an exciting start, both the Irish boats, who are each aiming to represent Ireland in the single place at the Paris 2024 Olympics, led their opening races in their respective flights. 

Seafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan (Royal Cork YC) went on to win the first race of the championship but Tokyo 2020 reps Robert Dickson (Howth YC) and Sean Waddilove (Skerries Sailing Club) counted a UFD score for a premature start.

Overall after three races, the Royal Cork Pair are lying 24th in the 88-boat fleet counting 1, 14, and 11 from the first three races. Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove counted UFD, 11 and 13 to be 53rd.

2021 World Champions, Bart Lambriex with Floris van der Werken (NED), set the standard with a 3, 2, 1 including a comeback from a bad start, and a comeback from a mid-pack first lap to show they can move through the fleet when necessary. Each of their comebacks came by jumping into shifts to pass packs and they had enough speed to make the boat-on-boat encounters fall in their favour.

Two further days of qualification racing will decide the split for Gold fleet racing that begins on Friday ahead of a medal race on Sunday afternoon for the best ten crews.

Results here

Ireland's top-ranked skiff pair Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove fought off French competition to win today's 49er medal race and win a World Cup silver medal at the Allianz Regatta in the Netherlands.

Training partners with the Irish duo, the home pair of Bart Lambriex and Floris van de Werken grabbed gold without needing to compete in the medal race but the Howth and Skerries Combination made no mistake about silver at the end of a strong week for the Irish Tokyo 2020 reps.

As Afloat reported earlier, Dickson and Waddilove and Lucas Rual/Emile Amoros (FRA) held second and third respectively, but many teams in the 40-boat fleet were breathing down their neck and ready to knock the Irish and French off the podium.

Dickson and Waddilove put the hammer down at the start and led all the way to the finish.

The battle for bronze swung this way then another as four different crews moved into podium contention throughout the two-lap contest. However, at the finish it was Benjamin Bildstein and David Hussl (AUT) who hauled their way to second across the line behind the Irish.

By a single point, the Austrians had bagged the bronze and relegated Rual and Amoros to fourth place.

The Dutch round of the World Cup saw ten Olympic classes compete in Almere in the southern part of the Ijsselmeer, east of Amsterdam.

Seán Waddilove and Robert Dickson (right) on the podium in Holland Photo: Sailing Energy

The medal couldn't come at a better time for the Irish pair who are aiming for a top result at next month's key European Championships in Denmark. Next up for the North Dublin pairing is June's Kiel Week Regatta in Germany

Full results here

While the 49er World Champions may have grabbed an early gold at the Allianz Regatta in the Netherlands yesterday, Ireland's Tokyo 2020 reps Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove are very much in the fight for a silver medal in the medal race on Saturday.

Dutch 49er sailors Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werken have secured the gold medal on day four of the Hempel World Cup Series at the Allianz Regatta.

As Afloat reported earlier, Dickson and Waddilove, from Howth Yacht Club and Skerries respectively and Lucas Rual/Emile Amoros (FRA) hold second and third currently, but many teams are breathing down their neck and ready to knock the Irish and French off the podium.

Sitting on 54 points Ireland has a five-point margin over the French but only 12 points separate second to fifth place overall in the 40-boat fleet.

With temperatures reaching to 25 degrees and winds picking up from 12 to 19 knots by the end of the balmy afternoon, the Markermeer waters between Amsterdam and Almere delivered stunning sailing conditions for all 10 fleets.

The perfect wind enabled race committees across all courses to make up most of the races lost to lighter and more fickle breezes earlier in the week.

In the 49er, Lambriex and van der Werken reminded their rivals why they won the world title in Oman at the end of last year. Winning five of the last six races, the Dutch go into Saturday’s Medal Race with an unassailable 29 point advantage. The gold medal is theirs.

Dutch 49er sailor Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werk (NED) secured the gold medal Photo: Sailing Energy/Hempel World Cup Series Allianz Regatta

Floris van der Werken explained their winning approach: "It was quite a strong field. A few of the worlds best are missing, but not many. We didn't really focus on the results this week, though, we never do. The focus was on communication onboard. We try to sail as one brain but with the capacity of two. Four eyes see more than two, but we have to think the same. That went very well this week. If the communication is good, if we give each other the right information, then we make the right decisions and we win."

Results in all classes are here

Irish Tokyo 2020 skiff duo Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove are in a three-way tie for second place in the 49er class of Holland's Allianz Regatta after eight races sailed at the Hempel World Cup Series at the Allianz Regatta.

The 49er World Champions have extended their lead on home waters. Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werken (NED) won both of Thursday’s Gold Fleet races to move to a 16-point lead. Second place is held jointly with teams from France, Ireland and the Netherlands all on 30 points in the 39-boat fleet.

A windless morning picked up to a sunny and moderate breeze of 7 to 13 knots in the afternoon and more of the same is expected on Friday.

Howth's Aoife Hopkins is lying 32nd in the ILCA 6/Laser Radial fleet while Emma Plasschaert (BEL) shot up the ILCA 6 fleet rankings on day three.

Howth's Aoife Hopkins competing in the ILCA 6 in the Allianz Regatta Photo: Sailing Energy

Like many of the favourites in the 57-strong women’s single-hander dinghy class, the reigning World Champion from Belgium had a tough start to the regatta with two scores in the 20s, but she bounced back today with a 2nd and then a race win.

This puts Plasschaert in third overall, a point behind Vasileia Karachaliou (GRE), but still some distance behind the overall leader, France’s Louise Cervera who has read the conditions like no one else. Cervera scored 3,2 and sits on just 12 points overall, and even her current discard of 16th is superior to that of her closest rivals.

Results in all classes are here

No Irish representation in the medal races at the Semaine Olympique Francaise (French Olympic Classes Week) in Hyères is a disappointment for Irish Olympic sailing efforts but there is consolation in the two top 15 finishes achieved in what is the second biggest regatta since Tokyo.

Laser/ILCA7

Carlow sailor Finn Lynch finished 13th overall in the ILCA 7 (Laser) after coming fifth in both races yesterday demonstrating he has the speed even if nursing an arm injury, missing the medal race by just 12 points.

His 21-year-old rival for Paris 2024 Ewan McMahon (Howth YC) moved up again in the fleet to finish 23rd overall, a result that confirms he is an exciting prospect and Ireland's second most successful full rig sailor since Mark Lyttle, Ireland's inaugural Laser helmsman at Atlanta 1996. 

The pair are now in preparation for the World Championships, a highlight of the year where Lynch will defend his 2021 silver medal in Mexico in May.

49er

With less wind than on previous days, Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove (Howth YC and Skerries SC) finished in 15th place in the 49er class after the day’s three races. Rivals Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan (Royal Cork YC) finished in 30th place overall.

Full results here

The regatta concludes today Saturday 30 April.

Dublin 49er skiff duo Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove are within striking distance of the top ten – and an important medal race place –  at the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma, Mallorca.

Lying in 13th place (but on the same 72 points as 12th placed Poles Lukasz Przybytek and Jacek Piasecki), the Howth and Skerries pair are just two points out of the top ten after a four-race day off S'Arenal east of Palma after day four of the week-long event.

As Afloat reported earlier, the Tokyo Olympians found themselves disqualified from a race on Wednesday in the 76-boat fleet when they were amongst a group of three boats (which included both Irish 49ers) that infringed an Italian entry on the starting line. Read the findings of the protest committee below.

The ruling meant they had to use their discard to drop that penalty maximum score.

Thursday's racing saw the pair place 22nd then 15th before delivering two sixth places in the high-speed conditions. They now lie 12th overall and tantalizingly close to the medal race cut off point.

Overall, the 49er class looks set to go to the wire with the top five teams going into the final day of gold fleet racing with only four points between them. Leaders are Poland’s European Champions Mikolai Staniul and Jakub Sztorch.

Spain’s Diego Botin, poised in fourth said, “We did not burn our discard yet and today we just focused on consistency. The third race we made mistakes and it was not so good. The new rig is quite different. I think it is stiffer and that makes it harder to sail. The old rigs probably have a small edge in these conditions but it is nice to have the change in the class.”

In one of their first European regattas together, the Royal Cork's Seafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan lie in 38th place.

Irish interest in the women's 49erFX class centres on sixth-placed Saskia Tidey of the Royal Irish Yacht Club who is in a new Team GB campaign with Freya Black.

Racing in all ten events continues on Friday to complete the fleet series with the top ten crews in each class going forward to Saturday's medal race finals.

Results here

Robert Dickson (Howth Yacht Club) and Seán Waddilove (Skerries Sailing Club) qualified for the Gold fleet of the 49er skiff event today (Wednesday 6th April 2022) at the Princess Sofia regatta in Palma, Mallorca.

After a three-hour delay ashore waiting for wind to fill in, racing got underway across the Bay of Palma but it wasn't until late afternoon when the 49er event got underway on the eastern shore.

Dickson and Waddilove played the windshifts well in the opening race and scored sixth. However, in the race that followed a starting-line incident involving two other countries saw them place tenth for that race, their worst score of the series to date which they discard.

That starting-line incident was the subject of a protest committee hearing and could yet make their discarded score much higher depending on the outcome. The pair have, however, qualified for the Gold fleet regardless.

Royal Cork sailors Séafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan had their worst result of the series so far with an 18th place but followed it with an eighth but were unable to make the cut-off for the Gold fleet on this, only their second major regatta together as a new pairing.

France's Erwan Fischer and Clément Pequin continue to lead the Men’s 49er fleet despite messing up the first race of yellow group before bouncing back with a second place in the next. “It was lighter today, so more tactical,” said Fischer. “We missed some opportunities in the first race but overall we’re very happy with how it’s going. The forecast looks good for tomorrow and it looks a bit stronger which is always fun. To be honest we are just happy to be back out racing again.”

Results here

Saskia Tidey in the 49er FX 

Saskia Tidey, of this parish, and her new teammate Freya Black, continue a consistent showing at their first event in a new campaign for Team GB. The duo are seventh from 53 in the 49er Fx

Tralee Bay Sailing Club in County Kerry is gearing up for a weekend of sailing on the west coast over the May Bank Holiday weekend.

The weekend will start with the club's yearly "Spring Regatta". Four races are scheduled on Saturday, the 3rd of April for the Optimist and dinghy fleets of the club.

The regatta is however open to visitors and last year saw the addition of 29er sailors from Dublin, GP14s from Cullaun and sailors from neighbouring club Foynes.

The weekend will then carry on with the combined 29er westerns and the first-ever "Open Skiff West" event.

The return of a regular season at home has been long awaited for the 29er fleet and the Westerns will launch a great summer of sailing and racing for the fleet. It will be the opportunity for the seasoned partnerships who have raced abroad over the winter to chase home waters honours and for the new partnerships to get finally introduced to racing. Who will add their name under 2019 champions Atlee Kohl and Jonathan O'Shaugnessy?

Skiff sailing is fun and there are many sailors around the country who have enjoyed the thrills of fast downwinds in their local club races. TBSC is offering the opportunity to gather all these speed addicts in a single venue for two days giving the opportunity to share tricks and stories with the more experienced sailors helping out the less experienced to get the most out of their boat. 49er and 49erFX should provide the bulk of the fleet yet we are also expecting a few of the trapezing RS (600, 700 and 800), Musto skiffs and some of the older skiff designs which still line up in various club boat parks around the country.

The event will be run under PY.

Details and entry form are on the Tralee Bay Sailing Club website, download the two NORs below. 

The current Olympic and world champions in the 49er and 49erFX will compete for the 51st Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca against top contenders in both classes.

Many of the leading sailors have been training during recent days, taking advantage of the excellent conditions on the bay of Palma, sporting the striking black sails that have been incorporated as the new official equipment for Paris 2024.

Among the 10 classes that will compete for the 51st Trofeo Princesa Sofía, the 49er stands out as the fastest and most spectacular monohull in the fleet.

The powerful two-person skiff has been an Olympic class for the 49er since the Sydney 2000 Games — and since Rio 2016 for the women’s 49erFX. Both share the same hull and crew of two, but the FX has a scaled-down rig.

According to Canadian Ben Remocker, manager of both classes: "The special thing about the 49er and FX is the balance between skipper and crew.

“In other classes, the crew is almost anonymous, whereas here he basically drives the boat with the sails and works in full conjunction with the skipper, which has allowed many sailors in the class to become great and respected sailing professionals, such as Xabi Fernandez, Blair Tuke or Iain Jensen. The 49er was the catalyst for them to become what they are today.”

With just under two weeks to go before the annual showdown begins on the waters of Palma, the list of entries includes a total of 80 boats from 28 nations in the 49er class and 59 teams representing 25 nations in the 49erFX class.

A cocktail of talent

The 49er fleet will include the world leaders in the class, who arrive in Palma after making interesting crew changes. Such is the case of GBR’s Olympic champion helm Dylan Fletcher, who will now compete with Rhos Hawes as crew.

Also changing partners are the 2021 world champions, the Dutchmen Bart Lambriex and Pim van Vugt, now in different boats, and Denmark’s representatives in Tokyo 2020, Jonas Warrer (the 2008 Olympic champion) who now sails in a rival boat against his former crew Jakob Precht Jensen.

In addition to the performance of these new partnerships, the new Spanish duo formed by Diego Botín and Florian Trittel is generating a lot of expectation. This new pairing will land in Mallorca directly from San Francisco, where they are competing with the Spanish SailGP team.

The 470 Olympic runner-up, Swedish Fredrik Bergstrom, will be making his debut in the 49er. And wwo boats will fly the Indian flag, something slightly more unusual in this division.

Saskia Tidey and Freya Black are a new 49erFX team for Paris 2024

Simply the best

In the 49erFX category, the Olympic champions of Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016, Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze, will be back in Palma. The Brazilians’ track record includes six medals in the last nine World Championships (one gold, four silver and one bronze) and the title of champions in the last edition of the Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca.

The Mallorcan Javier Torres, Grael/Kunze’s coach in their last titles, highlights the revolution undergone by the 49erFX fleet since the Games: “Of the top 10 from Tokyo, seven are no longer here, but there is a young generation that is very strong and will give us something to talk about: the Belgians, the Poles... We will have to see how the change of the New Zealanders works out.” Torres is referring to Alexandra Maloney, Olympic runner-up at Rio 2016, who is now competing with Olivia Hobbs.

Other pairs making their debut in Palma are those formed by the current World Champion, the Dutch Odile van Aanholt, and the Tokyo 2020 bronze medallist Annette Duetz; or the Team GB pair of Freya Black and Saskia Tidey, the latter a two-time Olympian, 2020 world runner-up and Dublin native now based in Dorset.

Black sails

As the first scoring event for the Hempel World Cup Series, the 51st Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca will be the first time that the teams will use the new regulation equipment for Paris 2024 in competition, in which the incorporation of 3Di technology sails stands out.

This detail will mean a spectacular aesthetic change in the fleet due to the characteristic black colour of the material, but it will also mean an interesting change in performance, at least in theory.

“Still a few teams that don’t have it, and of course teams can use the old equipment through the season as well,” Remocker says. “We’ll see what the performances differences are.”

The 49er and 49erFX teams will be based at the Club Nàutic S’Arenal. Their competition programme will consist of a maximum of 12 races to be sailed between 4-8 April, and their medal race on 9 April.

The 51st Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca is the first qualifying regatta for the Hempel World Cup Series 2022, organised by World Sailing, the International Sailing Federation. For more visit www.trofeoprincesasofia.org

Greetings everyone from us here at North Sails Ireland.

I was fortunate enough to get in a little "warm weather training" when I spent three days working with Irish Sailing’s performance squad at their winter training base in Lanzarote a few weeks ago. It was so inspirational to spend time in this most rarefied of elite sporting worlds again.

As part of their Olympic equipment charter, Olympic classes are obliged to review their key suppliers every two quadrennials. North Sails 3Di technology is unique in the market place and we were delighted to be chosen by the Olympic 49er / 49er FX skiff classes to be their sole upwind sail supplier. More on this 49er move here.

That's not the main point of this piece though......

I was blown away by the level of athleticism, sailing skills, professionalism and commitment of both our Irish 49er teams. The two teams (Tokyo 2020 Olympians Rob Dickson / Sean Waddilove and their training partners Seafra Guilfoyle / Johnny Durcan) are putting in monstrous days down there.

The programme is overseen in a very hands-on way by super-coach and 49er double Olympian, Matthew McGovern.

They have teamed up with current world champions Bart Lambriex and Floris Van De Werken from the Netherlands in a cohesive training group that is beneficial to both sides. The daily grind is tough, REALLY tough - as it should be. The training "blocks" are three weeks long, with a one week stint back home here in Ireland. Whilst in Ireland, the teams continue to train and attend to other aspects of their campaigns - it's certainly not a week off.

The daily routine in camp can vary of course, but a typical day may look something like this:-

• eat - 30 mins
• gym and recovery - 90 mins
• technical review session - video screen and/or boat park technical work - 90 mins
• eat - 30 mins
• sail - 5 hours
• eat and debrief - 45 mins
• boat work - 60 mins
• bike ride / short-run / cardio - 30 mins
• eat again
• sleep and repeat!

Whilst I was in camp, our focus was on assessing the new North Sails 3Di sail shapes, developing a new database of rig settings and tuning techniques with the objective of optimising the 3Di sails with the new carbon rigs, supplied by New Zealand manufacturer CST. Here is a video clip of Rob and Sean in one of our early sessions:

Dickson-Waddilove IRL powered by North Sails 3Di

Credit: Maurice O'Connell / North Sails Ireland

The 49er sail plan could be seen as complex. The carbon CST rig has double spreaders with three shrouds each side, all independently adjustable in mm increments. The mainsails have six full-length adjustable battens, including the "gaff" batten on the square-head main. The jibs also have threefull-length battens. The mainsail cunningham is enormously powerful, as is the jib halyard. Both have a massive effect on the mast bend and sail shape, as have the other controls (jib sheet, jib sheet clew board attachment, jib tack height, jib car inboard / outboard position and the mainsail outhaul). The 49er is almost always over-powered so it's all about developing the right "power mix" in order to optimise upwind "VMG".

We spent three long days on the water in a big Atlantic seaway, with winds steadily blowing 22 - 23 knots TWS. See my video below - just before a wave knocked the camera away - and this was before it got REALLY windy!

Dickson-Waddilove Big Wave

Credit: Matthew McGovern / Irish Sailing performance Coach

Huge respect goes to team-mates Seafra Guilfoyle and Johnny Durcan who selflessly ground it out for hours using the older mylar-based laminate sails (North Sails 3Di sails have no mylar laminate hence immense durability), whilst our main focus was on the new kit.

IRL 49er Teams - Dickson-Waddilove (L) and Guilfoyle-Durcan (R)Photo: Andrew Conan

Here is a video of Seafra and Johnny blasting upwind:-

Training partners Guilfoyle-Durcan - upwind in 20+ TWS

Credit: Matthew McGovern / Irish Sailing Performance Coach

From Nigel, Shane and myself here at North Sails Ireland, our best wishes go to both teams as they head towards their first major event of the year - the Princess Sofia Trophy event in Palma - which I last raced in the Olympic Star boat in 2007!