IRM heads for a close finish

TheDailySail's Andy Nicholson reports from Babbalaas, second placed in IRM ahead of the final coastal race

After the difficulties of Tuesday, we had a fantastic day on the water here in Cork Week on Wednesday - sunshine and 20 knots - enough to make your forearms weigh 20kg each when back on shore.

Today (Thursday) the weather closed in and the race course did not look like anything in the brochure. We had 16-20 knots, fog, mist, rain and you name it. Fortunately by the time everyone got back to harbour the sun had broken out and it was a very pleasant evening indeed.

On Wednesday we did two Olympic courses, with two reaches following the first beat, then after the second beat a square run to the finish. On Babbalass, the Farr 45 we went with the asymmetric for the reaches, and then switched to the symmetrical for the final run. This is good because you can just do any sort of drop knowing that you have to re-set all the gear, but I think I spent half my energy just hanging on as we had a big chop and the front end was lurching around all over the place.

Still we got a couple of good results in the bag and Babbalaas seemed much happier in the heavier conditions. Rebel was still fast, but we had just enough speed to hang on to them.

Today, after finding the commiteee boat in the fog and the rain, we sat around for over an hour waiting for things to happen. Two re-starts for IRC Class 0 and then a postponement as they re-set the line sent us all grumbling downstairs for the third time. On Babbalaas we got a good start in the miserable conditions and settled in for a steady beat with the other Farr 45s on our hips.

We kept ourselves together and sailed well to win overall on corrected time too. For the second race, which again seemed to take three hours to set up, we again got ourselves in a good position early on. Bear of Britain was over on the start and we were matching Rebel, just on our port side, up the beat. Bear came across half way up the beat and we had a small duck for her on starboard, Rebel had a bigger duck and never really recovered and we slowly eeked our way up onto their line to protect our position.

So things were looking quite rosy until the J-Lock on the jib sheet exploded. We were set up on the starboard layline - about 20 lengths out. We unthreaded the starboard sheet and put it down the port side and just managed to hold the layline, although Rebel had taken back three boat lengths and was right on our stern.

We held them down the run and although we had a slightly messy drop at the bottom, the pressure got to Rebel more and they slid to leeward. Glynn Williams’ Wolf then took up the gauntlet with a clean rounding shifting the positions around. The final beat let us extend slightly and we defended the run well to collect a second place on handicap to Chernikeef.

Tomorrow (Friday), the IRM class is doing a coastal race, which could be between 20 to 40 miles. Chernikeef leads by four points from us in second and sneaking up in third place, just a point behind is David Murren’s 2XL. Although we end up getting some separation from the Farr 40s and so it’s tricky to see exactly how they are doing, 2XL seem to be sticking to the plan and sailing very well in the mixed conditions so far to be in real contention for the class win.

The only frustrating thing right now is that for a bunch of Farr 40 sailors on Babbalaas we really don't need a discard (something we are usually praying for!) With that now taken into account, and with the score lines as above, we would be better off without it...