It is not unprecedented for leading clubs and one of the key class organisations within their ambit to share the MG Motor Sailing Club of the Year Award. It began with an added convention (the informal contest has been based on convention and precedent rather than rigid rules since it began 45 years ago) back in 1990, when class associations were first included. And while the contest’s gaining of traction resulted in another convention - that the same club could not receive the award two years running - it also emerged that Class Associations could better carry the venerable ship’s wheel trophy when the award was shared with the club with which they had most actively interacted during the year in question.
The most recent example of this was in 2022, when the 250-year-old-plus Lough Ree Yacht Club became a hotbed of activity with the Centenary-celebrating Shannon One Design Association, neatly acronymed SODA.
MG ALL-ELECTRIC VISION NOW PART OF IRISH MOTORING
That was the first time MG Motor were comprehensively on board as sponsors, and since then the pioneering all-electric brand has become part of the motoring scene in Ireland, attracting a host of accolades and awards while going well with this appropriate “sail-powered” sponsorship. The core of the range is in a comprehensive selection of saloons, but those who associate the MG brand with sports cars are well aware that the new MG Cyberster is coming down the line.
TURBO-POWERED OUT OF PANDEMIC SLOWDOWN
For 2024’s award, we’re dealing with organisations that emerged turbo-powered in 2023 from the lingering sense of restriction left by the pandemic. This has meant that the National YC (already a frequent former winner) would have been in the front line for the title regardless of the classes with which they were having dynamic interactions at different times during the past year.
But equally, while the Ruffian 23s were celebrating their Golden Jubilee on an all-Ireland and global scale involving several clubs, it was when they interacted with the National YC (both as their main home base, and also as the host club for their Golden Jubilee 2023 National Championship) that something akin to nuclear fusion took place.
This provided an event and setting that was sailing in Ireland at its very best for sport, camaraderie, and a sense of something special, with visiting skipper Stephen Penney of Carrickfergus emerging as champion with his team on Hot Orange, thereby providing a result which was as healthy as the spirit of the class itself, and of the club hosting it too.
COMMUNITY SPIRIT
For there is no mistaking the sheer quality of spirit and community which underpins everything the National YC and its members achieved during 2023 under Commodore Peter Sherry, an owner-helm with the club’s Flying Fifteen fleet. It is one of the most active F/F groups in Ireland, though that position is increasingly matched by the Connemara fleet, whose growth the Dun Laoghaire fleet have encouraged with the broad-minded National YC way of doing things.
But as it happens, this week Thomas Chaix - whose role as NYC Performance Coach for the past couple of seasons has upped the club’s success on all fronts – went ahead and posted his annual NYC Progress Report and Manifesto. This is purest serendipity, as the basic MG Motor Sailing Club of the Year 2024 decision was made - though very much under wraps - before Christmas. There were one or two provisos that had to be met before the end of the year, but the way that 2023’s final events concluded meant there was no change to the mid-December’s decision.
So the Chaix Gung-ho New Year 2024 Report and Mission Statement for the National YC is as valid as ever, as Thomas was unaware when he wrote it of the MG Motor award coming down the road this morning, and we posted his thoughts and images in full as seen here, meanwhile wondering what might be the French translation of gung-ho, and found that one possibility was tout feu tout flame.
NATIONAL YC IS WHERE TOP LEVEL SAILING MEETS LOCAL COMMUNITY SPIRIT
That does have a certain je ne sais quoi, but lacks the simple power of the original Anglicised Chinese gung-ho. Yet the fact that we’ve wandered into this very tangential discussion tells us much about the National YC. For its special location in the southeast corner of Dun Laoghaire, closest of all the clubs to the open sea while being clear of the crowded bustle of the town centre, means it has a real advantage through having the closest access to the suburbs – walking distance, in fact – such that it has perhaps the largest pavilion membership of any of the clubs. And the eclectic groups that gather there through the day to enjoy the club’s ambience and hospitality could be readily visualised as having an amiable discussion over coffee or something stronger about how best to translate gung-ho into French.
FAMILY TRADITIONS
All of this provides a charming contrast with the club’s very focused sailing, which is nevertheless all of a piece with the easygoing social side, as much of it is very firmly family-based.
The pace here is set by the Mac Aleavey-Murphy clan. Con Murphy and Cathy MacAleavey have logged a incredible life-path through our sport, with an impressive new Round Ireland record set in 1993 (it stood until 216) with Steve Fossett’s superb 60ft trimaran Lakota, while before that Cathy Mac Aleavey was an Olympic sailor in 1988, and after it Con served as NYC Commodore while their daughter Annalise Murphy was to go on to take Silver in the 2016 Olympics.
On another tack, Cathy was a pace-setter in the new growth of the Dublin Bay Water Wags, the harbour’s oldest class dating back to 1887, and at the same time became involved with the classic Shannon One Designs to such an extent that the NYC is now the venue for the Shannon’s annual Dublin Dinner in March, while at home the Water Wags current focus of expansion is in the National, with the latest addition to the class, the classic new-build Cormac, being commissioned by NYC Hon. Sail. Sec. Susan Spain in September 2023.
The boat was named in honour of her father Cormac McHenry, a longtime NYC Trustee who put the club on the world cruising map in a big way, reflecting the fact that the Commodore preceding Peter Sherry was Conor O’Regan, an out-and-out cruising man whose CV includes a global circumnavigation with the Rival 38 Pamina.
INTERESTING LINE OF COMMODORES
Conor’s predecessor as Commodore was in turn Martin McCarthy, who guided the club through the worst of the Pandemic lockdowns while managing to join his fellow syndicate owners in their frequently-raced Ruffian 23, a linkup which emphasizes the special interaction between the club and the Ruffians 23s.
This lineup is shared by NYC and Dublin Bay SC activist and historian Donal O’Sullivan, something which reminds us that the National is currently contributing the lion’s share of voluntary effort to the administration of Dublin Bay SC, the world’s largest organiser of sailing races in terms of membership. In DBSC, Eddie Totterdell (National YC) has succeeded clubmate Ann Kirwan as Commodore, while she in turn has re-focussed her considerable sailing organisational energies towards the impressive Golden Jubilee programme of the Ruffian 23s, where she races Bandit with success in Dublin Bay, while in West Cork she races her “other Ruffian”, Orla II, with Schull Harbour SC.
Female sailors and administrators are so central to National YC life afloat and ashore that it scarcely is mentioned of late, what with the club having their first woman Commodore with the late Ida Kiernan nearly a quarter of a century back, while the club’s Rosemary Roy is currently DBSC’s Honorary Secretary, and in due course Commodore Peter Sherry will be succeeded by Vice Commodore Rosemary Cadogan.
CARMEL WINKELMANN’S MISSION
This input was highlighted by the late Carmel Winkelmann, whose special mission in sailing life was the encouragement of promising young sailors to fulfil their highest potential. The classic case in point was ILCA sailor Finn Lynch, who back in 2016 was in the doldrums resources-wise, yet Carmel put a substantial support package together by the simple expedient of refusing to take “no” for an answer when approaching potential backers, and thus in 2023 Finn Lynch was the first to put Ireland’s 2024 Olympic sailing hopes back on track.
FIGARO SUCCESS
Another international sailor who hails from the National YC is Figaro skipper Tom Dolan, who celebrated the Figaro programme’s return post-Pandemic to international courses by winning the first leg of the 2023 Figaro contest, a long 610-mile race going round several turning marks in difficult sailing waters to get from Caen in Normandy to Kinsale, a real once-in-a-lifetime home-coming.
ISORA STRONGHOLD
As for offshore racing directly from the club, it is former NYC Commodore Peter Ryan who – as Chairman of the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association – is the main man in much of this. Although non-signature “ordinary” offshore races find difficulty in maintaining their popularity in the face of biennial big name events, the fact that Chairman Ryan is able to host the well-supported annual black-tie ISORA Dinner and Prize-giving in the National YC every November is something which helps to keep the show on the road.
And finally, before we turn to the Ruffian 23’s extraordinary Golden Jubilee Year with its highlight at the National YC at the end of July, looking both to the future and the past it is encouraging to hear that negotiations are well advanced for the NYC to allocate seven highly-visible moorings along the East Pier to accommodate the 1902-founded Dublin Bay 21s. These have been or are being beautifully restored by Steve Morris in Kilrush for Hal Sisk and Fionan de Barra, both of whom have links to the National YC going way back into the previous Millennium. Providing them and the restored DB21 class with this high level of visual accessibility to public and club observers alike can only help a truly worthy cause.
RUFFIAN 23s GOLDEN JUBILEE
It says much about how radical changes in the perception of word meaning can be achieved when we reflect that these days in Irish sailing, the word Ruffian no longer means “a violent or lawless person”. On the contrary, it immediately brings to mind a class of very able and popular little 23ft mini-offshore-racers that can trace their origins back to the original Ruffian, a very successful and much-liked 35-footer designed and built by Billy and Dickie Brown in Portaferry at the entrance to Strangford Lough in 1971.
Perhaps they called her Ruffian to get their naming retaliation in first, in the expectation that nobody could come at you later with any worse nickname. Be that as it may, by the time Ruffian had sailed and raced for just one month in 1971, her name had become a term of affection, and when they unveiled the production-built 23ft version in March 1973, it was given an immediate rocket-boost of favourable publicity through being called the Ruffian 23.
We covered the entire and wonderful Golden Jubilee year with this anticipation of the season-concluding expedition by a team of 20 Iris Ruffian sailors to Hong Kong in October here and concluded it here then, before that we carried reports of the National Championship in July here
All of this rightly indicates a spirited class that fits in well at many clubs, but after 50 years it is the National Yacht Club and Dublin Bay SC which seem to best exemplify just what a successful local One Design the Ruffian 23 can be, and thus the joint award of the MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year 2024 ” to the National Yacht Club and the Ruffian 23 perfectly expressed the overall mood of all that is best in Irish sailing as we move into 2024.