Signal 8 Sends a Message to the Cork Week Coastal Class

13th July 2022

Jamie McWilliam was out of sight ahead at the finish with his Ker 40 Signal 8. Jamie McWilliam’s Royal Hong Kong YC team racing Ker40+ Signal 8 was today’s winner. Tactician Andrew McLelland was also celebrating his birthday! “We were not sure which way to go on the first beat, so we hedged our bets and stayed in the middle of the course, which was a low risk strategy,” commented McLelland, a Chartered Surveyor, but also a J/24 World Champion. “Later in the race, we got a couple of shifts spot on and just accelerated away from the fleet, which we have to do as the scratch boat.” Credit: Bob Bateman

Around mid-afternoon today (Wednesday) the anemometers at Sherkin Island, Cork Airport and Roche’s Point were all showing quite decent sailing breezes. Grand day for a spot of steady yacht racing all along the magic Cork coast, you might reasonably think. Well, not quite……

For the wind being recorded at Sherkin was westerly. Up at Cork airport meanwhile, it was northerly. And almost within sight at Roche’s Point, where they’d the best breeze of all, it was t’other way completely – a straight southerly. Quite a challenge for the tacticians, and plain murder for race officers. Yet despite that, the interesting fleet in the Cork Week IRC Coastal Class got a result which – at this halfway-plus stage of the week – reflected the trends of earlier racing while shaking things up in a way that indicated there had been right and not-so-right and even wrong ways to go.

Jamie McWilliam of the Royal Fragrant Harbour YC was out of sight ahead at the finish with his Ker 40 Signal 8. But then with a rating of 1.242, he has to be if he’s going to be in the money, and that’s where he was, first by three minutes on CT ahead of Steve Hayes from Greystones with Magic Touch which rates only 0.979, while Steady Eddy, aka Peter Dunlop of Pwllheli with the J/109 Mojito, took third to stay in the top three overall, which at this stage has Signal 8 on 8pts, Mojito on 9, and Paul & Deirdre Tingle’s Alpaca from the host club on 15.

Paul & Deirdre Tingle’s X-yacht Alpaca from Royal Cork off Roches Point at the entrance of Cork Harbour Photo Bob Bateman

Race Results

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Published in Cork Week, ICRA

Published in Cork Week

Tagged under

Cork Week

About The Author

WM Nixon

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William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland for many years in print and online, and his work has appeared internationally in magazines and books. His own experience ranges from club sailing to international offshore events, and he has cruised extensively under sail, often in his own boats which have ranged in size from an 11ft dinghy to a 35ft cruiser-racer. He has also been involved in the administration of several sailing organisations.

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