Race Officer Harry Gallagher has added extra spice to the GP14 class Purcell Trophy at Sutton Dinghy Club this weekend with a variety of different course formats planned.
Breaking with the traditional Olympic triangle courses, the 40-boat fleet will race over windward/leeward and trapezoidal courses in a seven-race series on Dublin Bay.
North Dublin helmsmen Hugh Gill and Ruan O'Tiarnaigh might have a competitive advantage in the home waters of Sutton Creek, but strong competition is expected from north of the border with Donaghdee's Bryan Willis and Belfast's Alistair Duffin making the trip for the first open event of the season, and one of only a handful of indicator regattas before next year's world championships in South Africa.
Current Laser 2 national champion Michael Ennis, who has taken up a job as a UK McWilliam sailmaker in it's Cork loft, slipped to fifth overall at East Down Yacht Club last weekend, leaving overnight leaders Marcus Spillane and Shaun Doran, sailing Qualtron, at the top of the 13-boat fleet to become Laser 2 northern champions by the fifth race on Sunday evening.
The class has recently introduced a performance handicap system, but when the scores for the handicap prize for best improver were calculated, it emerged that nobody had actually improved their position, an indication, perhaps, of how close the racing can be in these two-man trapeze dinghies. The crew who slipped the least was Tom Lubliner and Mary McGuinness in ninth place overall, thus they were awarded the best improver prize. The Junior trophy went to Robert Espey and Scott Millar in sixth.
In what has already turned into a watershed year for the Enterprise class, a brand new fleet of 10 boats has been brought into existence by the initiative of Royal St George sailor Andrew Algeo, breathing new life into a dying Dublin Bay dinghy scene.
The class will now host its Leinster Championships at the Dun Laoghaire club at the end of this month, with a 30-plus fleet expected. Also ear-marked for participation in at least one Irish fixture this year - possibly the national championships in Oranmore, Galway - is world champion Richard Estaugh, along with the 1999 World's Grand Master Louis Moulde, an indication of the success and potency of the Irish fleet.
On the south coast, Mayhem (Tom McCarthy and Nicholas O'Halloran) continues her dominance of Class one ECHO (East Coast Handicapping Organisation) in the Ronayne Shipping May Midweek League off Kinsale, but is still being pressed hard by a familiar rival, Neill Prendeville's Mary P who was second again in this handicap series.
In the under £2000 handicap, John Godkin's VSOP, helmed by Martin Gowran, was only 45 seconds ahead of Gary and Susan Horgan's Amazing Grace. The Highland Dancer, sailed by the Carroll Brothers, was in third place, to put them joint second overall with both Amazing Grace and Mayhem.
Kinsale's Damian Foxall, racing double-handed with future Vendee Globe skipper Thomas Coville, has started in the Figaro Tour of Brittany, the tough eightleg offshore yacht race. Racing will take the fleet around some of the trickiest tidal waters in the world, according to Foxall, before finishing in St Malo on Sunday.
The Irish Sailing Association Olympic committee ratified last night the results of its selection trials for July's International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Youth Worlds in Kuopio, Finland. The team to represent Ireland is:
LASER: Peter O'Leary Royal Cork YC, Sarah O'Neill Royal St George YC, 420: Colm Gavin/Mark Rose Royal Cork YC and Clodagh O'Driscoll and Joanne Nelson Schull Community College.
As one around-the-world trip by Irish sailors ends, another Irish family is in the final stages of circumnavigation preparation, spurred on by last weekend's glorious welcome home for the Coveney's Golden Apple in Cork Harbour.
Pat Murphy and his wife Olivia depart from Ireland on July 18th in their Crossbow 40 Aldebaran.
The couple, who have been planning the four-year around-the-world trip since 1995, will join 160 boats, the largest ever fleet, for the Atlantic Rally for cruisers (ARC) in November, arriving in St Lucia in the Caribbean for Christmas.
