HYC had another good ICRA National Championships, which were held in Dun Laoghaire over the weekend. The conditions for racing were much better than had been predicted, with some fog but good winds on Friday, and near perfect conditions of flat water and 10-12 knots on Saturday and Sunday.
Kinetic reclaimed their national title in Class 2, with John Murphy, Richard Colwell and their regular crew of Neil Spain on helm, Dara O'Reilly, Gary Cullen and Craig Jefferes, now having won the title three years in a row, and four in the past five.
The class was very competitive, with great on the water racing and Kinetic's victory was all about consistency over the three days, which eventually made the results look a bit easier than the reality on the water.
Heavier weather on day one meant several boats already had a mixture of results they had to carry, whereas Kinetic recorded top five scores in all of the first three races. Two first places on Saturday all but secured them the title, and meant they only had to record a fourth or better in the first race on Sunday to take it again. This was achieved with a 2nd place on the windward leeward course on Sunday morning, and perhaps explains their initial OCS and 10th place in the final race, having already secured the title at this stage!
HYC was very strongly represented in the class with Dux taking 4th place on IRC, Indigo 7th, King One 8th, Sunburn 9th and Xebec 10th - which meant that in total HYC boats took 6 of the top 10 places, in a class of 29 boats from across Ireland.
HYC also took the honors in the Non-spinnaker Division 6 class, included in the National Championship event for the first time this year, with Joe Carton's Voyager taking first place on IRC, and Brazen Hussy also taking 3rd place. A set of results that were also mirrored on ECHO.
Other notable results included Crazy Horse claiming 3rd place on Echo in the Cruiser 0's; and in class 3 Vince Gaffney's Alliance had strong competition and ended up 4th on IRC, with Jibberish a J24 owned by O'Kelly, Walsh and Wormald taking first place on ECHO.
An honorable mention must finally go to the HYC committee boat, who ran the windward leeward course for the Royal St George Yacht Club, with David Lovegrove as OOD. The race management was excellent and it was great to hear the team from HYC being regularly complimented by sailors from all over Ireland.
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