#sywoc – The UCD Sailing Team, led by Philip Doran, has placed fourth overall for Ireland in the annual Student Yachting Worlds which concluded on Wednesday night at La Rochelle on France's Biscay coast. In a highly pressurized and very international event which Ireland has twice won overall within the past decade, it was the third year in a row that UCD had won the right to sail as the national team as a result of victory in the selection series back in the spring.
Since then, the squad of Philip Doran (helm), Rory Lynch (tactics & mainsheet), Ben Fusco (trim), Sophie Murphy (trim) Tara Flood (pit), Cian Mollen (mast) and Will Byrne (bow), with Vinnie Varley and Hannah Levins as subs, have been in intensive training afloat and ashore as it could best be fitted into their own busy summer sailing programmes, and as well they were brought to a peak of fitness in UCD's High Performance Gym.
The event itself was raced in Grand Surprise performance keelboats, and sailing conditions covered just about all the options for an international field of 12 nations, the most-travelled being Canada, the USA and Japan. From the outset, the English team helmed by Annabel Vose was putting in a prodigious performance whatever the kind of race and course being set, and their final scoreline of 1,2,1,1,1,1,2,1, 2,5,5,3,1,1,1,2 pretty well sums up the progress of the event.
At one stage Ireland was looking good for third overall, but an OCS put paid to that, with Norway slipping into the remaining podium position by just one point.
Two IRL international judges were on the Jury for the event - Tony O'Gorman and Gordon Davies (chairman)
STUDENT YACHTING WORLDS 2014
1st England (helm Annabel Vose) 30pts; 2nd Italy (Luca Nassini) 76pts; 3rd Norway (Ida Trulsrud) 87pts; 4th Ireland (Philip Doran 88pts; 5th Switzerland (Ireneu Pla) 89pts; 6th USA (Dillon Lancaster) 93pts.
