500 boats on Dublin Bay

A report from the first day of racing at the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta

Conditions that varied from windless with heavy rain and poor visibility at the start to sunshine and a brisk westerly at the end greeted the 500+ boats competing on the first day of the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta on Dublin Bay on Thursday.

In the Super 0 division, first honours went to Paul Winkelmann’s TP52 Island Fling with a narrow handicap win over Colm Barrington’s newly acquired Flash Glove and the highly competitive Class 0 fleet saw Jump Juice (Conor & Denise Phelan) from Cork emerge successful ahead of local Dun Laoghaire boat Tiamat (Tim Costello).

Kinetic, the Colwell/Murphy Corby 25 from Howth, headed Class 2 and David Bolger’s Lady Rowena from DMYC topped the large Class 3 fleet.

The long awaited SB3 appearance in a major regatta saw Ben Duncan and crew from Howth take the honours and in the longer established J/24s, Flor O’Driscoll won out as did David and Sarah Gorman in the Flying Fifteens, and the Cullen/Brown/Kirwan partnership in the Ruffians.

On the dinghy front, the National YC’s Francis Rowan and Jonathon O’Rourke headed the Fireballs and Mermaids respectively while Alan Carr from Sutton took the gun in the IDRA14s.

The race schedule for Friday 13th is for three races on each cours, the regatta continues until Sunday.

For more information : http://www.dlregatta.org/