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(L-R) Ryan Scott - Skipper, Sam O�Byrne - Trim/Pit,
Shane Diviney - Main Trim, Luke Malcom - Bow,
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Four Howth Yacht Club Sailors travelled to France last week to compete at the University of Nantes Match Racing Cup. The team representing Dublin City University was made up of Luke Malcom - Bow, Sam O�Byrne - Trim/Pit, Shane Diviney - Main Trim and Ryan Scott - Skipper.
The event was hosted by the University of Nantes and racing took place on the river Erdre.The event included teams from Hungary, Italy, Switzerland and Poland as well as seven French from around the country.
Extremely light and shifty conditions at the SNO provided challenging conditions over the course of the competition. The team started the first day with two wins over local teams from the University of Nantes, followed by a loss to the Polish Team from Gdansk having lead for most of the race. Later in the day the team secured a win over the Swiss team from Lausanne as well as a very close defeat to the Hungarian Team, with only a few inches separating the boats at the finish. They ended the day just outside the top 4. With the top 4 boats going on to the semi finals it meant the team couldn�t afford to lose many of their 6 remaining qualifying races.
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Day two saw steadier breeze coming down the river from the north. The Howth team had six races back to back in the afternoon. They sailed excellently in the afternoon claiming strong wins over teams from Brest, University of La Rochelle, Milan and Vannes in the first four races. They then suffered a close defeat to one of the local teams from Nantes, before finishing the day with a great win over EIGSI La Rochelle in a very tightly fought race.
The team finished the qualifying series with 8 wins and 3 losses and were hopeful this would be enough to secure a place in the semi finals. However there was a three way tie for 3rd place after the round robin between Gdansk, EIGSI La Rochelle and Dublin, with all three teams on 8 wins. It was deadlocked as each competitor in the tie had beaten one person in the tie and lost against the other. Unfortunately the race committee decided they would not have time to facilitate a sail off and tie was not broken in favour of the Howth team. As a result of this progression to the semi-finals was not possible.
To add salt to the wound the team sailed off for fifth/sixth place against the same competitor as last year (last year having tied for fourth place and entry into the semi�s with only six wins but again the tie breaker not going our way). The team again performed extremely strongly and beat La Rochelle in the first two races of the best of three.
The team would like to extend its gratitude to Howth Yacht Club for its support and the use of club boats used to train in.
We look forward to seeing you out on the water.
Luke, Sam, Shane and Ryan.
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