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Displaying items by tag: 1720 Sportsboat

Baltimore Sailing Club will play host to this year’s 1720 Nationals from Thursday 8 to Saturday 10 September.

Registration will take place Wednesday 7th September from 5-8pm and on the following morning from 9-10am.

The entry form and Notice of Race are now available, with the Sailing Instructions to follow closer to the event. See the Baltimore SC website for more.

Published in 1720

This week the Royal St George Yacht Club is running its 1720 Sportsboat clinic starting tomorrow, Tuesday 4 August.

The four-day clinic will run from 9am-12pm each morning until Friday and is geared at introducing the excitement of big boat sailing, and helping sailors transition from dinghies into keelboat sailing.

Sailors must be at an ‘improving skills’ level and should be comfortable with tacks, gybes, beats and runs and be able to efficiently sail a course in a dinghy.

The training will have a heavy focus on basic keelboat theory, kite work, rigging, and racing tactics/strategy. The coaches will be on board to help give a full experience.

The clinic fee is €175 per person and bookings can be made online HERE.

Places are also available for next week’s team racing clinic (five mornings from Monday 10 August, €175) and the weekly Sea Tigers for ages eight and up (10am-1pm weekdays, €160 with own boat, plus €200 to rent boat and gear inc deposit).

Published in RStGYC
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About Commander Bill King, Solo Circumnavigator

William Donald Aelian King was the last surviving submarine commander in the Second World War - in charge of the British Navy's T-class Telemachus that sank a Japanese sub in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Sumatra, in 1944.

Decorated many times for his service by the end of the war, King became a trailblazing solo sailor.

At the age of 58, he was the oldest participant in The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race sailing Galway Blazer II, a junk-rigged schooner he designed himself.

After a number of abortive attempts, including an incident with "a large sea creature", he finally completed his solo circumnavigation of the globe in 1973.

Beyond his aquatic escapades, King settled with his wife Anita (who died in 1984, aged 70) at Oranmore Castle outside Galway after the war, where he later developed a pioneering organic farm and garden to help tackle his wife's asthma.

The round-the-world sailor and Galway native Bill King died on Friday, 21 September, 2012, aged 102.