Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

The Royal Irish Yacht Club of Dun Laoghaire is so far the only club in Ireland which has indicated to Denis Byrne, Commodore of the governing Irish Cruiser-Racer Association and Vice Admiral of the Royal Cork YC, that it is prepared to undertake to provide two boats and crews for competition in the 2025 re-birth of the Admiral’s Cup series, envisaged as concluding its competition as a central feature of next year’s Centenary Fastnet Race.

The superb former Le Havre pilot cutter Jolie Brise was overall winner of the first Fastnet Race in 1925, and thanks to the meticulous maintenance of longtime owners Dauntsey’s School, she’s lined up to race the Centenary next year. Photo: Rick Tomlinson

With 14 nations registering interest, the format is flexible, as clubs or countries can be putting forth teams. It’s a useful state of affairs at this stage of team assembly negotiations, as no individual names need to be mentioned. Thus where a suitable boat is not immediately available to the challengers, then if one is not being purpose-built (and some are), the alternative of charter options can be explored with the essential element of privacy.

LONG TERM PROGRAMME ALREADY UNDERWAY

The long-term overall programme may now be underway with significant dates finalized as tabulated here, but the actual action is distilled into the final fortnight in July next year:

Each two-boat team will comply with the prescribed rating bands as outlined here:

MARK MANSFIELD, HE SAY

Seasoned campaigner Mark Mansfield of Cork was already an impressive Admiral’s Cup veteran before many of our readers were born, in fact he’s probably in the reckoning to be the youngest AC skipper ever, but being Mark it’s not something to which he gives undue attention.

Noting that an RIYC member has recently bought a Ker 46 which would fit in at the bottom of the upper rating band, he reckons that currently boat-less challengers will probably be aiming for charter of a TP52 or a PAC52 for the larger boat, and as modern a Fast Forty – or better still a Performance 40 - as they can secure, in order to challenge for the lower size band. For the rest of us, the fact that a Performance 40 is the small boat, with the entry fee at £5,500 for the biggies and £4,500 for the others, indicates that this is serious stuff, as those fees will be only a tiny fraction of the budget. But then the Admiral’s Cup is not your average sailing silverware – it’s pure gold in every sense.

“Pure gold in every sense”. International sailing may compete for an impressive collection of historic silverware, but when you want a memorable Admiral’s Cup, it has to be gold

VARIED HISTORY

This Royal Ocean Racing Club’s revival of the 1957-inaugurated biennial Admiral’s Cup Inshore/Offshore series has a special resonance for Ireland. We may never have won it during its peak three-boat team years from 1967 to 1997 (it finally petered out after 2003), but we have twice had the top scoring AC Fastnet Race boat through Ken Rohan’s Holland 39 Regardless in 1981 with Robert Dix as lead helm, and the chartered Dubois 40 Irish Independent – with Tim Goodbody as lead helm – in 1987.

Ken Rohan’s all-conquering Holland 39 Regardless during the Irish Admiral’s Cup Trials at Cork in May 1981, racing seaward past the rocks off Roche’s Point. Phot: W M Nixon

Before that, going into the concluding Fastnet Race in 1979, our “Team of Teams” was leading the overall points table by a country mile, with Ireland’s Holland 42 Golden Apple, Holland 39 Regardless and Peterson 39 Inishanier ahead of a record fleet of 19 national three-boat squads. But although the 1979 Fastnet storm disaster was to wipe out much more than a small island nation’s hopes of carrying off a mighty international ocean racing victory, nevertheless it’s that mood of almost supernatural promise preceding it which we now remember.

COMMODORE’S CUP

Since then, the Commodore’s Cup played a more-than-useful role as a sort of “Admiral’s Cup Lite” from 1992 to 2016, with Cork’s Anthony O’Leary the hero, sometimes pulling three boat teams together apparently by a mixture of sheer faith and pure willpower, and with such success that Ireland won in 2010 and 2014.

Keeping the flag flying. During the lean years, it was Anthony O’Leary’s determination to keep Ireland in the picture with the red-hulled Antix in the Commodores Cup that inspired everyone with superbly judged performances

ADMIRAL’S CUP A “HEALTHILY ORGANIC GROWTH”

But the Commodore’s Cup lacked the Magic Ingredient X, as it was deliberately scheduled in non-Fastnet Race years. The Admiral’s Cup, on the other hand, started as a healthily organic growth. It emerged from the fact that boats from overseas had been increasingly using a neatly balanced programme of the RORC Channel Race in the weekend before Cowes Week at the beginning of August, then racing at least twice in Cowes Week itself in the Britannia Cup on the Tuesday, and the New York Yacht Club Cup on the Thursday, before heading off in the concluding and high-scoring Fastnet Race on the Saturday.

American skipper Dick Nye’s successful Philip Rhodes-designed yawl Carina off Cowes. She was overall winner of the 1955 and 1957 Fastnet Races, and her regular participation in the biennial Channel Race-Cowes Week-Fastnet Race programme was one of the inspirations for the inauguration of the Admiral’s Cup in 1957

Initially, the Admiral’s Cup was aimed primarily at the Americans, as the great Dick Nye of the Cruising Club of America with his wonderful Phil Rhodes-designed Carina II had dominated the Fastnet in the late 1950s. But soon the rapidly-expanding sailing scene in France saw their team making an appearance, and by the mid 1960s the Australians were shipping boats – including Gordon Ingate’s extraordinarily successful 1948 Robert Clark-designed Caprice of Huon – halfway round the world to take part, and achieve success too.

Classic stuff. Australian Gordon Ingate’s 1948-vintage Robert Clark-designed Caprice of Huon slicing her way in style through Cowes Roads in 1965 to win the Britannia Cup. In 1967 he was a member of the Admiral’s Cup winning Australian team

ADMIRALS CUP WINNERS:

Year	Winner	Top Placed Yacht
1957	United Kingdom
1959	United Kingdom
1961	United States
1963	United Kingdom	Clarion of Wight (GBR)
1965	United Kingdom
1967	Australia	Mercedes III (AUS)
1969	United States	Red Rooster (USA)
1971	United Kingdom
1973	Germany
1975	United Kingdom
1977	United Kingdom	Imp (USA)
1979	Australia	Police Car (AUS)
1981	United Kingdom
1983	Germany
1985	Germany
1987	New Zealand	Propaganda (NZL)
1989	United Kingdom	Jamarella (GBR)
1991	France	Corum Saphir (FRA)
1993	Germany
1995	Italy
1997	United States
1999	Netherlands
2001	cancelled
2003	Australia	Wild Oats (AUS)
2005	cancelled
2007	cancelled

 

WHAT WENT WRONG?

Why did such a once extremely healthy event appear to simply fade away and die, or at least go into semi-permanent hibernation with only a couple of countries interested at the end? Well, it’s something of a broad stroke to make this claim, but the rapid growth - despite slow acceptance – of sailing professionalism at all levels of command contributed greatly to the temporary (let’s hope) demise of what was a once-successful series beautifully tailored for skilled Corinthians.

After all, an able amateur could do the entire user-friendly series in a fortnight’s holiday, which in Ireland and France – for instance -meant that you could give the Admiral’s Cup series two weeks of total devotion, yet still have some leave time left for holiday duty with the family in Kerry or Brittany.

GENUINE CRUISER-RACERS AGAINST STRIPPED-OUT RACERS

Then too, the early participating boats were genuine cruiser-racers – some crews even lived aboard during Cowes Week - but this domesticated approach was soon pushed aside by the professional stripping of boats for purely racing purposes. In other words, the Admiral’s Cup series was trying to be all things to all men and women. But inevitably the lust to win would dominate, and it became an irritant for the serious pros to have to share already crowded race courses with other less proficiently-sailed boats that may not even have been in the same competition.

Denis Doyle’s 47ft Clark-designed Crosshaven-built Moonduster of 1965 racing for Ireland in the 1969 Admiral’s Cup

IRELAND’S ORGANISING BODY

Ireland first entered in 1965, when the organising body for our team was the Irish Cruising Club. But with the pace of the event increasing almost exponentially with every biennial staging, the weight of organization was such that, with the ICC increasingly becoming a totally cruising organisation whose public face was the publication of Sailing Directions, the Irish Yachting Association took over, with the Irish Admirals Cup team selection, organisation and management through its busy Offshore Racing Committee chaired by Malachi O’Gallagher.

Consequently your columnist - as an IYA Council Member delegated to the Offshore Racing Committee through what you could reasonably consider to be a series of clerical errors – found himself involved with the Admiral’s Cup for many years which included being a selector, active boat place contender, management team member, general reporter and PR man, and post event analyst.

TWIN PEAKS

Of the two peaks in this unlikely involvement, one came in 1979 when I was delegated to Plymouth to welcome home what looked like being the winning Irish team, and found myself instead being accidentally given privileged interview opportunities with overall winner Ted Turner while the remains of the lost Irish hopes struggled home after the 1979 Fastnet storm.

The 63ft Sparkman & Stephens-designed Tenacious (Ted Turner) arrives at the Fastnet Rock in 1979 some hours before the storm struck

The Fastnet storm of 1979, and Tenacious races on to the overall win

The other was 1987, when the formidable pairing of Sean Flood and Terry Johnson formed the core of a compact but high-powered management. Team sponsorship was there in abundance with Heineken, while Jameson Whiskey backed a boat and Irish Independent backed the third, a Dubois 40 tweaked to the uttermost by the genius of Jo Richards.

Jameson throws a neat tack to stay ahead in Solent AC racing

GOODBODY THE GREAT

With Tim Goodbody of the Royal Irish YC as lead helm, Irish Indo soon showed her potential by out-tacking the form boat, near-sister Jamarella helmed by Lawrie Smith, in an enthralling duel in the Solent. And then at the finish of the Fastnet, with at least four of the 40-footers sweeping into Plymouth in line abreast, the fact that Jo had ensured that the Indo’s rating was a fraction of a fraction less than anyone else’s provided the overall Fastnet Race 1987 win, while the Irish team had their best Admiral’s Cup placing at fourth out of thirteen nations.

The crew of 1987 Fastnet Race winner Irish Independent at a celebration in the Royal Irish YC in December 2016 are (left to right) Billy Pope, Tom Power, Jo Richards, Stephen Fein, Sean Flood (Team Captain), Tim Goodbody, Tom Roche and Graham Deegan. Photo: W M Nixon There were of course to be other notable Irish challenges before the Admiral’s Cup collapsed in 2003 under its weight of expectations, internal contradictions and enormous and irretrievable expense. In the intervening 37 years, offshore and ocean racing has of course increased enormously, but it has become so utterly international that trying to select team based on some criteria of nationality is wellnigh impossible.

CLUBS NOW IN ASCENDANT

But meanwhile in some ways the wheel has come full circle. The clubs are back in the ascendant. They may draw in members from many nations, or only a few, but if you add to your club’s successes, as far as your fellow members are concerned you can be the Unknown Sailor from Planet Zog and they won’t mind at all.
That said, being the Royal Irish Yacht Club does cover a lot of location and nationality bases, and there’s no doubting the formidable resources and abilities of those whose enthusiasm the club can rely on. But once the event gets going, it can be quite the leveller.

While the Royal Irish Yacht Club headquarters may be in Dun Laoghaire in the world’s oldest complete purpose-built yacht club building of 1850 vintage, it has a strong international element in its membership

Back in 1975, the social pace ashore in Cowes Week in a week of good weather was getting to be too much, and the word was spread among the Class I boats that the real scene of the action would be in the relative privacy of the midst of the marina where we found ourselves on Otto Glaser’s McGruer 47 Tritsch-Tratsch II, berthed in a pole position so convenient that some of the crew preferred to sleep on board rather than drag themselves to some distant digs where the tone would be set by nylon sheets.

SUMMER EVENINGS IN COWES WEEK

Things got going quietly enough, but then Davy McBride started to lead some very distinguished sailors astray with the Dunmore Diversion. This dated back to his boyhood summers in Dunmore East, when he and his brothers would attach a rope to the back of a bike and take it flying straight off the end of the pier, somehow with all three riding the thing.

If Cowes Week has been too hectic, the Fastnet Race is a real cure for whatever ails you. Here, the classic S&S yawl Dorade, overall winner in 1931 and 1933, makes a return visit in impressively restored style. Photo: Rolex

After a mighty splash, they would then swim to the shore, haul the bike back up onto the pier, and do it all over again. To repeat the performance in Cowes Marina in 1975, Davy only had to borrow a line and liberate a nice new bike meant for marina staff, complete with functioning lights. Thus as the performance got going on a repeat basis, the abiding memory is of the bike’s red rear light disappearing into the murky water after they’d ridden at full tilt off the end of the main marina walkway.

THE NOISE AND THE PEOPLE….

Everyone wanted a go, so at times the numbers riding the bike together were ridiculous. And the atmosphere went crazy, with the Brazilians building it up on their bongo drums. For once, it seemed I was the only sane one in the place, as soon all that I could think of was the extremely expensive topsides of the boats (not least our own) close on either side of this new bikeway, and beyond that the stratospherically expensive professional international sailing athletes who seemed determined to outdo each other in this hectic new sport, and damn the danger.

So I took a can of beer and sat down away from it all on the other side of Tritsch-Tratsch’s substantial mast for some sort of peace, to find there was a guy we knew, from regularly sailing against him, seeking a similar quiet spot for a beer on the Argentine boat Fortuna just across the way.

Knowing him as someone who had serious concerns ashore which he determinedly avoided by sailing with genuine enjoyment as much as possible, the two of us simply raised our beer cans in unvoiced salutation across the water, and shared the peace of the moment in a sort of companionable silence. Then in November, one of us became the King of Spain.