Did we really manage it? Did we really cram all those major special and routine regular sailing events into the one season of 2022? And all that despite its three main months afloat experiencing decidedly mixed weather? And also despite the fact that many folk had simply got out of the way of packing lots of active racing and hectic après sailing into an already complicated way of life?

Yes, it was the Bounce-back Summer and no mistake, making up for the Pandemic’s lost time with major international events running back-to-back, and all that in the midst of a crowded programme on the local front, with some clubs finding that – thanks to their prime restriction-compliant place at the heart of the community – they were actually emerging into the new reality with more members than they’d had going into the plague years.

Thus we’re a bit like someone who resumes swimming after an absence, and begins by diving off an excessively high board which leaves them gasping as it is, yet they persist in swimming determinedly on with excessive speed and enthusiasm for fear that some new restrictions will suddenly bring it all to a sudden end.

BREATHLESS WITH ACHIEVEMENT

In other words, at the moment the sailing community is simply breathless with exhaustion and achievement. And it takes an extra effort to contemplate the season of 2023, at a time now - in November/December - when many of the more sociable clubs are still holding frequent functions to celebrate the remarkable amount of sailing – and successful sailing at that – which has been done at home and abroad during 2022.

So in contemplating the 2023 season at this stage, we’ll take a fairly broad-brush approach. What will be the pillar events, and what will be the main underlying themes?

 Secret waters. The usually private Shannon One Desigs went public for their Centenary in 2022

As ever with Irish sailing’s long history, there’ll be significant commemorations to be marked. 2022 saw the Centenary of the Shannon One Designs, celebrated by that normally rather private class with very public festivities on Lough Ree and Lough Derg during July, following which they were able to go back into their time-honoured closed-shop mode during August’s traditional lake regatta weeks.

SAOIRSE CIRCUMNAVGATION CENTENARY

In 2023, the big One Hundred to be marked is the Centenary of the start from Dun Laoghaire on the 20th June 1923 of Conor O’Brien of Limerick’s pioneering voyage around the world south of the great Capes in his new own-designed Baltimore-built 42ft ketch Saoirse.

Conor O’Brien’s new Saoirse takes her departure for the Great Southern Ocean from “Dunleary” on June 20th 1923

As Saoirse was to become the first sea-going vessel to fly the ensign of the newly-established Irish Free State, everyone – but everyone – quite rightly feels that they own part of this remarkable achievement. Yet as a consequence, those who have been quietly flying the O’Brien voyaging achievement banner for decades, trying to ensure that it is all properly placed in a national and global context, found that they were in danger of being swamped by new enthusiasts who wanted to make a complete circus out of the entire affair.

The re-created Saoirse newly-launched at Oldcourt in September 2022 - looking good, but with too much work still to be completed for a full programme in 2023. Photo: John Wolfe

However, reality has intervened. The West Cork summer resident who has a Saoirse re-build being created at Oldcourt has indicated that the boat won’t really be in a properly tried and tested seaworthy condition for any Dun Laoghaire celebration planned for June 2023. And in any case he tends to feel that it is more appropriate to keep her in West Cork in celebration of that area’s often-overlooked contribution to the magnificent O’Brien circumnavigation of a century ago, and his subsequent success with the 56t ketch Ilen.

REALISTIC CENTENARY CELEBRATION SAILING ILEN

But as the 1926-built O’Brien-designed 56ft Ilen has been sailing again as a multi-purpose vessel for some years now, thanks to a meticulous restoration programme by Gary MacMahon of Limerick and the Ilen Project working with Liam Hegarty’s boatyard in Oldcourt near Baltimore, a more realistic commemoration scenario has been devised by the Irish Cruising Club in co-ordination with the Ilen Project.

Saoirse’s “big sister”, the 56ft Ilen, has been recruited to take on a celebratory role for the Saoirse Centenary. Photo: Gary Mac Mahon

The ICC was not founded until 1929, but one of its first acts was to make Conor O’Brien its first Honorary Member. However, during his voyage it had been the 1880-founded London-based Royal Cruising Club which gave him enthusiastic support through the regular award of its premier trophy, the Challenge Cup.

This was done three years in a row in 1923, ’24 and ’25 as his voyage progressed to its successful conclusion in Dun Laoghaire exactly two years to the day after departure. And the RCC’s leading officer was also very encouraging in the promotion of O’Brien’s book of his voyage, Across Three Oceans, which in terms of its genre, became a best-seller.

All this was in a time of political turmoil in Ireland with Dublin/London conflict, when O’Brien, moreover, was entering the international sailing arena with a personal history of having been one of the 1914 gun-runners in favour of Irish Home Rule, along with Erskine Childers and Sir Thomas Myles. Thus it was courageous and generous to come out so openly in London in his support, and in recognition of this, the ICC will be joining the RCC with he Ilen as flagship in a Centenary cruise-in-company from Dun Laoghaire to Madeira and back, while the two clubs will be joining forces in publishing a re-introduced re-print of Across Three Oceans.

Cape Horn pioneer Conor O’Brien as portrayed by his wife, the artist Kitty Clausen, in 1930

DUBLIN BAY SAILING CLUB JOINED CELEBRATION

This neat solution to what was shaping up to be a possible clash of viewpoints as to how best the Centenary of the beginning of Conor O’Brien’s Saoirse voyage should be marked is further enhanced by realising that the major celebration should really be on the Centenary of his return, on June 20th 2025. It happened to be a Saturday back in 1925, yet Dublin Bay Sailing Club cancelled its legendary Saturday racing programme in order that its complete racing fleet could welcome Saoirse home.

That in itself was such a totally unprecedented gesture by the 1884-founded DBSC that its Centenary deserves celebration in its own right. So maybe harmony can be maintained by everyone anticipating some special celebration on June 20th 2025, when a sense of completeness might be possible with the more relaxed presence of the re-created Saoirse.

THIRTY YEARS OF THE DUN LAOGHAIRE-DINGLE RACE

Meanwhile, 2023 is already very Dun Laoghaire-focused with the 30th Anniversary staging of the biennial Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race from the National Yacht Club on Wednesday, June 7th, and the all-clubs four day Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta from July 6th to 9th. The Regatta Director this year is Paddy Boyd, whose extensive sailing experience and interaction with Dun Laoghaire and Dublin Bay are so intertwined as to be part of his DNA.

Paddy Boyd is bringing an unrivalled wealth of Dublin Bay sailing and administration experience to the challenge of the VDLR 2023. Photo: Robert Bateman

Nevertheless, it will take all the expertise and enthusiasm of Paddy and his team to get the VDLR machine up and running at full blast again. It’s a formidable setup when it gears fully into smooth action, which made it a doubly-cruel blow when it all had to be pandemic-dismantled early in 2021. Back then, Don O’Dowd (who will continue as Chairman for 2023) was heading the large group of volunteers who finally learned that their already much-worked-at and intensely-sociable VDLR 2021 simply wasn’t going to happen.

SOVEREIGNS AT KINSALE WILL MAKE COMEBACK

In their racing to Dingle, the D2D competitors - with the Murphy family’s Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo of the Royal Cork YC the defending champion, having been welcomed back to Crosshaven after her victory in 2021 with a full gun salute by Admiral Colin Morehead – will be battling past Kinsale, which hosts its own battles with Sovereign’s Regatta on June 21st to 24th.

Every major regatta in Ireland – whether it be Bangor Town on Belfast Lough, Wave at Howth, the VDLR in Dun Laoghaire, Volvo Cork Week in Cork Harbour, the Sovereigns in Kinsale, or Calves Week at Schull – manages to have its own unique character, partly because those seven premier sailing centres somehow all manage to be completely different in character from the other six.

Kinsale. Every major regatta centre in Ireland is unique, and the special charms of Kinsale are obvious Photo: Wikimedia

Yet the Sovereigns at Kinsale - sponsored in 2023 by Simply Blue - will have at least one significant carry-over from 2022’s Volvo Cork Week. The 1720 Euros were the highlight of Crosshaven last July with a crack fleet of 42 boats, many of them with superb restoration and re-spray jobs which belied their class’s 1994 origins. The Crosshaven-Howth team of the English and McDonald talents combined on Atara to come out tops, which means that at Kinsale they’ll be the target boat, while the other target is to push the fleet of these eternally attractive boats through the 50 mark.

After thirty years, the Cork 1720 Sportsboat is as attractive as ever. They’ll be hoping for a fleet of 50-plus at Kinsale next June for their Euros as part in the Sovereigns Regatta

THE INTERNATONAL SCENE

We’ll be taking a much more comprehensive look at the international prospects for 2023 in a future SailSat, but anyone who thinks that the Irish representation afloat for the 2024 Olympics in Paris (with the sailing at Marseille) will be selected by the end of 2023 might be surprised when some of it goes right down to the wire in April 2024, which has happened in times past.

Be that as it may, on the offshore scene 2023 gets going early with the Caribbean 600 in February – there’s almost invariably Irish involvement, and we’ve collected more than our fair share of its silverware since it was inaugurated in 2009.

The dream of thousands – racing in the RORC Fastnet Race. 2023’s edition - the 50th – will start earlier than usual, on July 22nd. Photo: Kurt Arrigo

But inevitably the focus will mainly be on the Fastnet Race 2023, which unusually for this 50th Edition, will be starting in July, on Saturday 22nd July from Cowes, but taking in the new extended course to finish at Cherbourg. Presumably this timing is partly to allow the heavy brigade to take in Cowes Week itself in August, but meanwhile, looking ahead to the Fastnet Centenary in 2025, we still don’t really know if the old course to finish at Plymouth will be acknowledged and used. But either way, Ireland certainly has skin in the game as the first racing of the new course in 2021 saw Irish Offshore Sailing’s vintage Sun Fast 37 Desert Star from Dun Laoghaire - skippered by Ronan O Siochru - put in an appropriately stellar performance to take a close second in Class IV and an impressive 14th overall in a huge fleet.

Stellar performance – the crew of Desert Star (Ronan O Siochru on right) have a nano-second of relaxation towards the end of the 2021 Fastnet Race, as it becpmes increasingly clear they are second in class and 14th overall in a fleet of hundreds

INSS & THE DUN LAOGHAIRE PHENOMENON

The fact that Desert Star’s success was just one of many achievements being logged by the continually-developing Dun Laoghaire sailing and training scene – both commercial and in the clubs – reflects the new interest that sailing attracted as the first small easings of the pandemic began to apply in the local context.

Ultimately, it’s all about the numbers game. The Rumball family of the multi-function and high-achieving Irish National Sailing School are originally from Malahide, while Ronan O Siochru of IOS took his first serious steps afloat in Kinsale. But in facing business realities, they all realised that the population package right beside good sailing water which Dun Laoghaire and South Dublin offers made it no contest in deciding to base their locations around The Old Granite Pond, and sailing history has proven them right.

“THE HOWTH PRODUCT”

That said, the slightly quirky appeal of Howth Harbour, which prides itself on NOT being part of Dublin Bay, proved to have its new and established adherents in considerable numbers as sailing emerged from the plague years. The modern HYC clubhouse/marina reaches the end of 2022 with 2,173 members when you include all categories, and they look forward to a 2023 season which is fascinatingly book-ended by the National Youth Championship from 13th to 16th April 2023, and the ICRA Nats from 1st to 3rd September.

For those who try to take in all the information they can from developing situations, it w be fascinating in getting an overview of sailing development to see how many juniors who take part in their own multi-class championships in April then reappear in some crewing or helming capacity in the ICRA Nationals at the beginning of September.

HOWTH SEVENTEENS’ 125th ANNIVERSARY TO BALTIMORE

Meanwhile Howth’s eternal 17ft OD Class - founded in 1898 - continues to attract all ages, and they celebrate their 125th Anniversary in 2023 with many events, a highlight being a week’s “one class” regatta visit to Baltimore in mid-June.

They’re no strangers to West Cork, as master-shipwright Rui Ferreira of Ballydehob has done significant work on some of the boats, and back in 2003 no less than 15 of them decamped en masse to the Glandore Classics Regatta, dropping out of the regular programme to take in circuits of the Fastnet Rock and other eccentricities.

The Howth 17 Leila (Roddy Cooper) at the Fastnet Rock during the Glandore Classics 2003. The 1898-built Leila was already six years old when the Fastnet Lighthouse began signalling in 1904. Photo: W M Nixon

In fact, when the Howth Seventeens are hunting as a pack, it’s really easier for everyone if they do their own thing, and even then you need to be tuned in to their system of in-class communication, which supposedly relies on a WhatsApp, but in practice seems to be utilizing some form of supernatural telepathy.

So my thoughts are with anyone with a bigger boat with an auxiliary who happens to be detailed off to be the Mother Ship to the Seventeens in June. For as we learned in in 2003, you’re called the Mother Ship because the Mother is always the last to know.

Thus the fleet found themselves on a foggy windy morning in Castlehaven when - just along the coast in Glandore - the rest of the Classics fleet were being confined in-harbour for their racing. But the Seventeens’ race plan for that day was a slightly offshore sprint from Castlehaven to Glandore, with the winner being the first boat to have a crewperson down a pint in Casey’s of Glandore, thereby throwing in a brief but intense bit of hill running to add to the sailing sport.

With the poor visibility and the brisk onshore wind, the Mother Ship was assured that they’d take the more sheltered route inside High Island. But once we’d cleared the entrance to Castlehaven, it was quite clear that the class was determined to face the more challenging seas running outside High Island.

Summertime in West Cork. The Casey’s Pint Race from Castlehaven to Glandore, July 2003, with Aura (1898, left), and Deilginis (1907, right), shaping up to use the breaking Copper Rock off High Island as the weather mark. Photo: W M Nixon

Moreover, they seemed to have agreed among themselves that it was safe enough to chance going over or inside the submerged Row Rock, and therefore the half-tide Copper Rock southwest of High Island became the weather mark.

When you see a bunch of Howth 17s racing flat out past the Copper Rock as the seas break over it within a metre or two of the boats, you know you’re dealing with a bunch of total free-thinkers. So good luck to whoever is the Mother Ship in June next year, twenty years down the track from that first Casey’s Pint Race.

Sovereign's Cup Regatta Director Tony Scannell has published the Notice of Race (downloadable below) for next June's 15th Cup for Cruisers, Coastal and White Sails fleets.

Scannell confirmed Kinsale Yacht Club is looking forward to welcoming everyone back to a 'full-strength' regatta in the town post-COVID.

The biennial regatta, one of the most important south coast regattas, will run from 21st to 24th June 2023, and, as Afloat reported previously, it will incorporate the 1720 sportsboat European Championships and has attracted a new sponsor.

The 1720s will stage their 2023 European Championships as part of the Sovereign's Cup at Kinsale Yacht Club in June Photo: Bob Bateman

The West Cork club confirmed the Blue Economy Project Developer, Simply Blue Group, headquartered in Cork, as the title sponsor, a welcome boost first announced by Scannell at the Cork Week 2022 prizegiving in July.

Kinsale Yacht Club Regatta Director Tony Scannell is looking forward to a bumper 15th edition of the Sovereign's Group with a new title sponsor, Simply Blue Group Photo: Bob Bateman

The Notice of Race for Cruisers, Coastal and White Sails fleets and the 1720 Euros are available to download below.

The fleet's in - the 2021 Sovereign's Cup fleet gathered at the Kinsale Yacht Club marina in West Cork. The 2023 edition will be held from 21st to 24th June Photo: Bob Bateman

Registration is now open for 2023 Simply Blue Group Sovereign’s Cup here.

Scannell says there is a substantial Early Bird discount across all the fleets. An Early Bird Draw will take place on 15th March. Details of regatta fees are outlined in the NOR and the registration form.

Kinsale Yacht Club has announced a new title sponsor for its biennial Sovereign's Cup and is aiming for a full 100-boat fleet for the 2023 event.

The offshore energy company Simply Blue was unveiled as the new sponsor by Sovereign's Cup Director Anthony Scannell at the Cork Week prizegiving at Royal Cork Yacht Club last Friday.

The full title of the cruiser-racer event is the 'Simply Blue & Emerald Sovereign's Cup 2023', reflecting the energy company's Emerald project on the site of the former Kinsale Gas fields.

Scannell, who was competing on his yacht Hansemer at Cork Week, was appointed Cup director by the West Cork club in May, and signed the new title sponsorship two months later.

"There's great 'harnessing the wind' synergies between Simply Blue and the Sovereign's Cup, so we are delighted to have them on board", Scannell told Afloat.

The regatta will take place from 21st to 24th June 2023.

"The club is very much looking forward to returning to the pre-covid number of entrants," according to KYC Commodore Matthias Hellstern.

The 2023 event will be the 15th edition of the biennial event.

In the popular White Sails ECHO divisions of the Sovereign's Cup, James Matthews Jeanneau 49 Sun Odyssey Fiscala of the host club took the honours from Graham Vickers in the Elan 37 Capella in Class One. Frank Caul's Grand Soleil 37 Prince of Tides was third.

In White Sails 2 ECHO, Kinsale Yacht Club's John Twomey sailing the Blazer 23 Shillelagh was the overall winner after five races sailed.

Twomey's crew beat the Howth YC skippered Oceanis 323 Clipper, Sapphire. Third was the Dufour 365 Privateer (Dermot Lanigan) of the host club.

Fiscala - James Matthews Jeanneau was first in the White Sails Echo division Photo: Bob Bateman

Results here are provisional and subject to protest. 

Day Four Sovereign's Cup Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

It took steady nerves among the Kinsale Yacht Club officer board and Anthony O'Neill and his Sovereigns Cup Organising Committee to keep to their carefully planned staging of the biennial Sovereigns Cup 2021, continuing a 1995-founded pillar event of Irish sailing. They were successful in running an intense pattern of racing within current health regulations for a fleet which may have been kept down to 62 boats, but it was encouraging for all Irish sailing in that – while participants were drawn mainly from the Cork and Dublin areas – they included a Galway Bay SC crew, and the East Coast contenders numbered northern Fingal sailors in their ranks.

A Coastal Race start of the 62-boat 2021 Sovereign's Cup Photo: Bob Bateman

As to the fleet, while generally representative of a contemporary regatta anywhere in Western Europe, it was encouraging to note that there were several new boats barely out of their wrappings. And for those who seek some classics to leaven the mix, we'd a trio of vintage Quarter Tonners and a couple of Half Tonners too, while former Race Director Tony Kingston was setting the Kinsale tone with his immaculately-restored Swan 40 Shindig.

Tony Kingston's immaculately-restored Swan 40 Shindig

The Swan 40 was Olin Stephens' special design of 1970 to demonstrate the ideal of what the then-new International Offshore Rule boats should look like. While a new wave of hyper-competitive designers may have limited the IOR's period of usefulness, at the time it was a major breakthrough in creating a universally accepted international rule which produced boats that have stood the rest of time as handsome vessels of enduring elegance.

In a different style, another golden oldie which showed she can still pitch in there with the new boats was Kieran Collins' Coracle VI from Crosshaven. She may be an Olson 30 which first saw the light of day on the West Coast of the US way back in 1978, but she's still hot to trot, and the regatta finished with her winning IRC2 overall, which will have them dancing - socially-distanced of course - in the streets of her birthplace of Santa Cruz in California.

Kieran Collins' Coracle VI from Crosshaven Photo: Bob Bateman

However, generally the headline winners were startlingly new in terms of build year, even if some of the designs have been around for a little while. In theory, the new J/99 should narrowly outperform the vintage J/109, even if the 99 rates slightly higher. But Ireland has developed a fleet of highly-tuned J/109s, and with nine of them in Kinsale and all the talent present, Mike and Richie Evans from Howth with their ultra-new J/99 Snapshot were up against it.

Mike and Richie Evans ultra-new J/99 Snapshot Photo: Bob Bateman

However, they'd a secret weapon in the form of clubmate Laura Dillon on the strength, all-Ireland Champion Helm in 1996 (the only female winner so far), and sharper than ever as one of Ireland's most accomplished sailors, with Snapshot turning in a neat scoreline in the final races to clinch it in convincing style ahead of the baying pack of J/109 hounds.

Out on the coastal course, it was another newbie from Howth, Bob Rendell's impressive Grand Soleil 44 Samatom, which emerged ahead in the end, her on-board talent lineup including Mark Mansfield, and 2017 Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Year" Conor Fogerty. Getting second in that division added yet another laurel to Denis & Annamarie Murphy's Nieulargo from Crosshaven, an earlier smaller sister of Samatom as she's a Grand Soleil 40.

Bob Rendell's impressive Grand Soleil 44 Samatom Photo: Bob Bateman

Nieulargo arrived in Kinsale fresh from the traditional Royal Cork YC five gun salute for the overall victory in the Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race, in which she'd Samatom astern on corrected time. So maybe there's unfinished business here – there's always the Fastnet Race, and failing that, how about Calves Week in Schull in August?

The sometimes rugged conditions experienced by the large coastal course division tended to favour the bigger boats, and so the odds were stacked against the sole West Coast entry, Liam Burke's recently-acquired Farr 31 Tribal from Galway Bay SC, but they battled on regardless and were accorded VIP treatment as the only boat from Connacht.

Liam Burke's recently-acquired Farr 31 Tribal from Galway Bay SC Photo: Bob BatemanThe Men from the West in Kinsale – the Farr 31 Tribal (Liam Burke, Galway Bay SC) was the only Connacht boat racing at Kinsale, and the furthest-travelled of all entries. From left Mark Wilson, Liam Burke, Justin Mitchel, David Carberry, Jack Nolan and Brian Forde

On the home front, Kinsale itself is the quintessential family sailing centre, and this was most positively represented by the Matthews family with their White Sails Class 1-winning Sun Odyssey 49 Fiscala with three generations of Matthews on board, helmed by Harvey (aged 12) with his crew including grandfather Bruce (age not disclosed, but it's a very long time since he got the Free Bus Pass).

Fiscala - James Matthews Jeanneau was first in the White Sails Echo division Photo: Bob Bateman

After four intensive days of racing, the complete ramifications of the Sovereigns Cup 2021 will merit weeks of analysis, particularly when set in the context of the continuing emergence from the pandemic of sailing in particular, and Ireland in general. In the circumstances, it was a very precise and difficult target to aim for. Kinsale Yacht Club have done us all a very great service in succeeding in their one chance of hitting the bulls-eye.

Read all Afloat's Sovereign's Cup 2021 coverage in one handy link here

Bob Rendell's brand new Samatom Grand Soleil 44 has proved fast straight out of the box by winning the O'Leary Insurances Sovereign's Cup Regatta Coastal Divison at the first attempt.

The 17-strong division featured was the biggest of the Cup with some of the biggest yachts including first, second (joint) and third from this month's Dun Laoghaire Dingle Race.

Grand Soleil models took the top two places in the coastal division with Samatom's little sister the Grand Soleil 40, Nieulago finishing up second overall with a final race win today.

Rendell who was the overnight leader after Wednesday's first race but then lost the lead to Conor Phelan's custom Ker 37 Jump Juice after races two and three benefitted from stronger offshore winds for the final race later in the week.

Sailing with Rendell was Olympian Mark Mansfield, the Irish Grand Soleil agent. 

Results here are provisional and subject to protest. 

Day Four Sovereign's Cup Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

The overnight leader was ousted from the top spot in IRC Division Three today in the final race of the O'Leary Insurance Sovereign's Cup.

David Lane in the J/24 YaGottaWanna overtook rival and club mate Royal Cork Quarter Tonner Supernova (Dave O Regan & Denise Phelan & Tony Donworth) for the top prize.

Although both crews finished on the same 15 points, Lane won overall based on his first place in the last race of the series. 

The final races of the series were round the cans races in 13-20 knots of offshore breeze off Kinsale Harbour today.

A second Cork Harbour Quarter Tonner BonJourno! Part Deux (Rob O'Reilly) finished third overall. 

Results here are provisional and subject to protest. 

Day Four Sovereign's Cup Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

Two final race wins in round the cans racing on the final day of the O'Leary Insurances Sovereign's Cup has given Royal Cork's Olson 30 Coracle VI (Kieran Collins) the overall title in IRC Two.

Just a single point separated overnight leader David Kelly's Half Tonner King One of Howth Yacht Club from the Crossahven crew going into the final day of racing but the two race wins tipped the balance in favour of the south coast crew.

David Kelly's Half Tonner King One of Howth Yacht Club Photo: Bob Bateman

The final races of the series were round the cans races in 13-20 knots of offshore breeze off Kinsale Harbour today.

George Radley's Cork Harbour Half Tonner Cortegada took third place.

Results here are provisional and subject to protest. 

Day Four Sovereign's Cup Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

With three race wins and six results in the top three, there was never any doubting the speed of Mike and Richard Evans debutante J/99 that has won the O'Leary Insurances Sovereign's Cup IRC One overall by a convincing margin of nine points.

Fast straight out of the box, the Howth YC J/99 crew with Shane Hughes of North Sails and ace helm Laura Dillon on board were in top form since Wednesday breaking the J109 stranglehold in some style.

Out of the 14 -competing boats in Class One, ten are J109s that filled all but one of the top six places overall.

The Howth brothers confirmed their win with a 1 and a 3 in the final round the cans racing in 13-20 knots of offshore breeze off Kinsale Harbour today.

Finbarr O'Regan's new Kinsale J/109 Artful Dodjer moved up to second overall on the final day in IRC One of the Sovereign's Cup Photo: Bob Bateman

A win in the last race was enough for Finbarr O'Regan to move from fourth overall overnight into the runner up position behind the J/99. It's O'Regans' first regatta on his new J-109 Artful Dodjer after his D2D offshore debut earlier this month. The second overall won today secured prevents a Howth 1,2,3 in class one.

A UFD penalty in the last race dropped Richard Colwell and John Murphy's J109 Outrajeous from second to fifth overall on the final day.

First-day leader, Pat Kelly's J109 Storm from Howth and Rush finished third overall. 

Results here are provisional and subject to protest. 

Day Four Sovereign's Cup Photo Gallery By Bob Bateman

After a comparatively windy penultimate day at the O'Leary Insurance Sovereign's Cup today and the final races of the series due to start on Saturday morning, another race is on at UK Sailmakers Ireland tonight to repair sails in time for tomorrow's first gun.

The Barry Hayes lead team at the Crosshaven loft are repairing "lots of headsails and a good few badly ripped spinnakers" overnight.

The aim is to get all the Sovereign's Cup fleet back racing in the morning.

Results are in the balance in all classes going into the final day at the Cup at Kinsale. 

Even stronger winds are expected for Saturday's regatta finale that will round off a complete test across the full range of conditions.