#hyc – Competitors at the Key Capital Spring Warmer series in Howth Yacht Club were treated to glorious sunshine on the opening weekend of the season but unfortunately for all, the wind gods weren't as generous writes Daragh Sheridan.

In Race 1 in Class 2's Dave Cullen's beautifully turned out Checkmate got off to a winning start from Maximus in second and K1 in third.

The SB20 fleet was led from start to finish by Michael O'Connor in Sin Bin despite a great second beat by Ger Dempsey on Venues World. The podium was completed by Jerry Dowling's Bad Kilcullen.

The J24 fleet had shown great commitment in getting entries from as far afield as Sligo, Carrickfergus and Lough Ree. It was a dominant performance by Steve Atkinson in Bad winning both races with Martin Reilly's Crazyhorse and Finbarr Ryan taking a second a third place in each of the two races.

Local Squib guru Fergus O'Kelly heads the fleet with two first places. Second is Brian O'Hare and Alain Deladienee followed by HYC's Dave Sheahan.

Unfortunately the SB20s and Class 1 & 2 only completed one lap before the wind shut down forcing the race committee to abandon their second race.

Hopefully we will see greater number out for the second Saturday as more boats get launched and there is no Leinster match competing for competitors attention.

#j24 – Flor O'Driscoll's Hard on Port from the Royal St.George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire has taken the J24 national title for 2014 after three days of racing at Lough Erne Yacht Club in Co Fermanagh.
In the final day of racing at the Northern Ireland club, Hard on Port took line honours in the penultimate race of the day to set up the Royal St George Yacht Club entry for the title.
Stefan Hyde's RCYC entry, Hamilton Bear, pressed hard on the final day but was unable to mount a challenge strong enough to grasp the title away from the vastly experienced Munster man at the helm of Hard on Port.
Lighter winds were an ease to the competitors after the two previous days of gruelling conditions and with the sun shining down on Lough Erne, the trip up north paid off for the visiting boats.
Line honours for the last race of the day went to U25 crew on Kilcullen from Howth Yacht Club as local boat Jamais Encore pressed for a runner up spot.
Results:
Overall - Hard on Port Flor O'Driscoll RstGYC
Runner up - Hamilton Bear Stefan Hyde RCYC
3rd - Kilcullen Gordon Stirling HYC
4th - Jamais Encore JP McCaldin LEYC
5th - Crazy Horse Tim Corcoran Sligo

#j24 – Day two of the Irish J24 National Championships made for a gruelling affair for the competitors as winds gusted above 25 for most of the racing day writes Andrew Carey.

With it brought a change to the leaderboard with Flor O'Driscoll's Hard On Port taking line honours in the first two races of day two.

Unfortunately for the leader after day one, JP McCaldin's Jamais Encore, retirement from race one due to a damaged rudder meant that running repairs were called for as the fleet raced on in race two, but tantamount to the resolve of the Lough Erne boat, JP and his crew returned to take line honours in the final two races of the day.

With heavy winds and squalls rolling in off the north western shores, the 12 crews took their punishment as the country's best J24 boats battled and vowed for the lead which changed throughout the tight racing.

With 6 races sailed, Hard On Port has the lead by three points over Stefan Hyde's Hamilton Bear and Jamais Encore and further eight points back.

With two races to sail on the last day, close racing will again be to the fore as the top boats battle it out for the national J24 title.

Results after 6 raced
Hard on Port Flor O'Driscoll RsGYC
Hamilton Bear Stefan Hyde RCYC
Jamais Encore JP McCaldin LEYC
Kilcullen Gordon Stirling HYC
Crazy Horse Tim Corcoran SYC

#j24 – Day one of the J24 Irish Nationals at Lough Erne Yacht Club got off to a blustery start in the Northern club yesterday as winds gusting up to 25–knots challenged the fleet of a dozen boats for honours over the first round of the three day event.

After two races, local boat Jamais Encore helmed by JP McCaldin has the jump on the fleet with a win in the first race followed by a 4th in race two as conditions settled.

Tight racing was the order of the day as the lead boats chopped and changed throughout the race legs. Race two honours went to Tim Corcoran at the helm of Crazy Horse from Sligo Yacht Club.

Overall, the top five boats in the class are separated from each other by just one point - Jamais Encore (JP McCaldin LEYC), Hamilton Bear (Stefan Hyde RCYC), Jellignite (Finbar Ryan LRYC), Crazy Horse (Tim Corcoran SYC) and Django (Martin MacNamara RWYCI / LRYC.

#j24 – For the first time in decades, the European J/24 sailors are making a migration north into Scandinavia to sail the J/24 European Championship. The event takes place from the 9th to 15th of August and will be hosted by ASSS Sailing Club in Angelholm, south-west of Sweden. It follows a 42–boat Euro championships at Howth Yacht Club in Dublin last year. Thirty-seven teams are participating from seven countries (Denmark, England, Germany, Italy, Monaco, Sweden and USA) in 2014 but unfortunately there are no Irish entries this year.

The single largest contingent participating are the twenty-five German boats, mostly from the northern parts of the country. Many of their top sailors who've participated in past Europeans and Worlds are in attendance, as well as a number of their top women teams.

In addition to the five teams from Sweden, top America sailor Mike Ingham will be racing, as will Dennis Frederiksen from YC Monaco.

Top five in Monday's Tuneup Race

1. Front Runner, Per-Hakenn Persson, SWE
2. Vitesse, Manfred Konig, GER
3. Paget, Dennis Frederiksen, MON
4. El Nino, Mike Schmolling, GER
5. Flying Colours, William Pollock, GBR

Racing starts Tuesday and continues through Friday. More information here

#hyc – Howth Yacht Club's new Sportsboat initiative attracted J24s, J80s and the visiting 1720 European championships for its first outing last weekend.

 Well known cJ24 skipper  Flor O’Driscoll and the crew of his J24 Hard On Port were the deserving overall Sportsboat Cup winners for 2014 and were awarded the Romaine Cagney Trophy.

Impressively, they did not count a result worse than second for the regatta and won half of the races. The popular winners have been stalwarts of the J24 class in Ireland who also have won several IRC titles in the well campaigned boat. They were only delighted to be taking another piece of silverware out of the Pale to Munster.

The  cup was sailed in three days of glorious sunshine and light winds. Suncream and water were some of the most important parts of all crews’ kit every day as temperatures were consistently over 20 degrees. Water was especially important after many of the competitors were burning the midnight oil each evening. Racing was successfully completed on Sunday which incorporated the 1720 Europeans, the J24 Easterns and the Sailfleet J80s. The race officers did exceptionally well to get the full schedule of races completed on both race courses without any delays. The challenging conditions and a big shift meant that the last race of the day on Saturday for the 1720s had to be abandoned to avoid it becoming a lottery. PRO Derek Bothwell’s mantra that “It is better to have no race than a bad race” was a wise one. In any case, there was ample time to make it up on Sunday morning to get all eight races in.

1720s made a welcome return to HYC after over a decade of absence

The 1720 Europeans came down to the wire and was decided in the last race to by the slimmest of margins. After a match race with Denis Murphy’s Aquatack in the last race, Peter O’Leary’s Jacobs Bar emerged victorious by just half a point overall to defend his title from last year. Not far behind the leading pair was a surprise performance from Kenneth Rumball on INSC.ie who rounded out the podium places. Maybe the Dun Laoghaire based team should travel to the events more frequently and the rest of the Dublin based fleet will too. The top performer from outside of Ireland came from Tom Forrestor-Coles and his crew from the south coast of the UK who finished fourth, just two points off the podium.

1720 winners. Pictured Adam Hyland, Cathal Cottrell, Peter O’Leary, Jamie Donegan & Youen Jacob

O’Learys title defence was impressive as earlier this year the boat was in a sorry state after being abandoned for years in a field in Baltimore. Left under a tree with the hatch open the boat was covered in leaves, dirt and the hull was full of water. Before they began the resurrection Cathal Cottrell even joked “We thought of entering the boat in the Chelsea flower show instead of the Europeans when we found her, and we nearly did”. After only rigging a new mast on Thursday night and splashing for the first time early Friday morning, they got off to a relatively slow start but definitely got into their rhythm on Saturday and hauled in Aquatack before conclusion on Sunday. Seventeen year old Adam Hyland was a welcome addition to the crew and O’Leary praised the young talent in his acceptance speech.

Eoin O’Fearghail

When the wind dropped on Saturday for the J24s and J80s racing was as rapid as Elephant Polo. The wind direction chopped and changed to the point where PRO Richard Kissane decided to abandon and restart Race 2. Whereas it didn't suit those doing nicely at the time, it was the sensible decision. The restarted race got away smartly in a bit more breeze allowing the fleet to get all scheduled races under their belts and home in time for tea and tiffin....and after-sun!

Sunday's racing was brought forward an hour to test those who were out the night before. A few cups of Blue Nun did nothing to slow up Flor O'Driscoll and his team who put in a stellar Sunday performance.
Lough Swilly's "Bandit" lived up to its name by putting in a sweet port tack start in Race 5. Open-jawed, the rest of the fleet took some time catching!

Overnight leader Stefan Hyde on Hamilton Bear had a wobbly start to the day but finished off the weekend with a well deserved bullet. In the last they weren’t able to push Hard On Port down the fleet enough in the last to snatch the overall title at the death, so it was second overall for them. Howth Yacht Club’s Under 25 Keelboat Team on Eurocarparks Kilcullen rounded out the podium in third place.

J80 winners. Joan Harris, Gillian Guinness, Elaine Taylor, Sally Watson & Linda Darbey

In the Sailfleet J80 class Gillian Guinness and her ladies team took the title ahead of Mossy Shanahan. In the closely fought class young Ewan McMahon finished a close third. With most of the fleet trading blows Gillian and her crew were very consistent and eked out a lead which meant they had the series wrapped up with a race to spare. There were even sightings of wine and other delights on the sail home each day on board. The bulk of the fleet from second to fifth place were separated by only four points. Exactly what you want and expect from such evenly matched one design racing.

Howth would like to thank all the competitors who made the event as good as it was and Edward Dillon who generously sponsored some prizes. We hope to have everyone back and even more classes involved when we run the event again in 2016.

Full Results here: http://hyc.ie/results

#hyc – With only a week to go anticipation is building for the inaugural HYC Sportsboat Cup at Howth in County Dublin writes Ross McDonald.Three fleets will be battling it out over two racecourses in what is promising to be a spectacular addition to the Irish racing calendar. Racing will begin on Friday the 20th June and run over the weekend on what is the longest day of the year.

Racing will start at midday each day but the fleets will be back on dry land in time to take advantage of the late evening sun. Post sailing music and barbeques are booked for each day along with a sailing supper by HYC's new chef Jason Dunphy (ex Rolys, Conrad and more) on offer for Friday evening. On Saturday evening there will be a midsummer celebration with a dinner dance organised so the club will certainly be a lively spot.

The 1720 Europeans will be held as part of the event which is drawing an international flavour to the racing, with boats travelling from the UK to compete for the title. This is the first time in several years that this event has been held out of the 1720 stronghold of Cork and it is giving the boats from Dublin a new lease of life. Entries are coming in from the host club as well as The Irish, The George and the INSC in Dun Laoghaire. That's not to mention all of the old heads that are popping up on some of the regulars boats to rekindle their love of the 1720 and impart some local knowledge while at it. Boats are starting to arrive this weekend with the aim of familiarising themselves with race area.

The J24 fleet will be hotly contested with several seasoned campaigners and previous regional and national champions battling it out for the title. The fleet have lots of experience racing in Howth and are returning to the battleground of last summer's Worlds and the Europeans from 2011.

The J80s will be populated with lots of notable sailors across a wide range of ages. From young Oppie champions to world match racers and everything in between this racing is promising to be memorable. With all the boats rigged and tuned identically this fleet will come down to nothing but the sailors skills.

As well as awarding fleet prizes a perpetual trophy will be awarded to the overall event winner. The details of how it will be decided will be revealed in the SI's.

There is still time to get an entry in. You can enter online here

#jboats – Back in the days of bespoke yachts, when a qualified naval architect had finally finished a new design to his satisfaction, he'd sign off on the drawings writes W M Nixon. Whether or not the contracted boatbuilder then adhered strictly to the plans was another matter. Often, any changes had to be counter-signed by designer and builder alike. But when it worked, it was a nice gentlemanly arrangement, in keeping with the times when boats were one-offs.

With today's production boats, there may well be a designer's or builder's signature somewhere on the finished product, but it will either be moulded-in, or machine-inscribed on an affixed metal plate. Any truly personal touch has long since gone. Yet now J/24 owner Emmet Dalton, Honorary Sailing Secretary of Howth YC, has obtained a uniquely personal signature on his boat's rudder which means that one particular small but precious area of his beloved sailing machine will never be cleaned off, sanded down, or re-painted, for it's a tangible reminder of the very special human and American story which underlies the origins of the mighty J Boat empire.

The story begins in 1975. Rod Johnstone, then an ad salesman for a sailing trade magazine and an active one-design sailor, decided to build a sailboat he had been designing since completing a Westlawn School of Yacht Design correspondence course in the 60's. With $400-worth of fibreglass and wood, plus some rigging and hardware left over from a Soling of his brother Bob, he built the 24' LOA x 9' beam Ragtime on weekends in the three-car garage at his family home in Stonington, Connecticut. During the summer of 1976, with an all family crew aboard, Ragtime beat everything in sight. Rod realized he had created something special.

Enter Everett Pearson, the owner of Tillotson Pearson, Inc, a highly respected boat builder in Warren, Rhode Island. He was quite taken with Rod's design and agreed to produce the boat on spec in return for the U.S. building rights. Display ads in the sailing trade magazine got the word out. That winter, they set up a makeshift factory in an old textile mill in nearby Fall River, Massachusetts, and began popping out J/24s.

Enter the marketing experience of brother Bob, a vice president of marketing at AMF/Alcort (the makers of Sunfish sailboats at the time). He had seen the potential in the boat Rod had designed. From 1975 to 1977, Bob had helped to take Alcort from the red into the black, and then began trying to convince AMF to start producing a boat similar to the J/24. When AMF didn't jump, in February of 1977 at age 43, Bob did, and threw in his lot with J/Boats.

In all, 5,400 J/24s have been built since, plus hundreds and sometimes thousands of other designs. It has been another case of the phenomenal commercial and creative power of American brothers working together. Think Gougeon Brothers with WEST Epoxy Systems, for instance, a company so successful that when the brothers retired, they handed it over to their employees as a very tangible way of saying thanks. And think too of Olin and Rod Stephens of designers Sparkman & Stephens. They were very much a team, and it was Rod's skill and ingenuity with rigs and rigging which persuaded the great Carleton Mitchell to transfer his design loyalties from Philip Rhodes to Olin Stephens, resulting in the 38ft Finisterre which won the biennial Bermuda Race three times on the trot.

The J/24 Worlds 2013 at Howth set the bar for this special event. Photo: David Branigan

The Johnstone brothers are from the same sort of background, and with the global nature of the modern marine industry, such people are almost Godlike in our maritime world. So when the word got out that Bob Johnstone was recently visiting Howth to meet Irish J/24 President Flor O'Driscoll and see for himself the location of the memorable J/24 Worlds 2013, there was quite a fluttering in the dovecote. The opportunity was too good to miss. Emmet Dalton's J/24 Jebus is a very special boat. She was J/191 out of the moulds in America, and made with extra-special care in 1978 as she was then sent to Italy to be the plug for a new European J/24 construction facility, a plant which in its turn enabled the J/24 international expansion, and a setup which the brothers could call their own.

Robin Eagleson of Lough Erne YC, World President of the International J/24 Association. Photo: W M Nixon

So Jebus got the very special autograph with an indelible pen, and life in Howth returned to normal. Bob Johnstone and his wife were actually holidaying in Ireland with the President of the International J/24 Association, Robin Eagleson of Lough Erne YC. And it emerged that Mrs Johnstone is a minister of the American Episcopalian Church. Had they got to Cork, they could have exchanged notes with another sailing clergyperson, Paul Colton, the Bishop of Cork. And of course in the north, the Archbishop of Armagh, Robin Eames, has been so keen on sailing that he has had boats built by Chris Boyd, the Puppeteer man, one of them being a Puppeteer 330 called Nido, which is Odin spelt backwards.

Make of that what you will. For now, with Jebus and her signature, sailing has a new sacred relic.

#hyc – A Sportsboat Cup for Irish keelboat classes to be held around Midsummers day and tailored especially for 1720s, SB20s, Quarter Tonners, J24s, RS Elites, Dragons, J80s and J70s, is to be staged for the first time at Howth Yacht Club in north Dublin from 20th - 22nd June 2014.

At this multiclass event each of the sportsboat classes will be given their own start, results and prizes.

The event will incorporate the 1720 European championships as part of the event and there is an expectation of visiting UK and continental crews too.

Racing will be one design with the exception of the quarter tonners and mixed class who will race under IRC. Class rules will apply where applicable.

HYC says any other sportsboat type that has an IRC cert will also be accommodated in a mixed sportsboat fleet.

Howth is using the event to champion its sailing facilities both on the water and ashore at the 'bustling fishing village' venue that is also close to Dublin airport.

The largest club in the country has two cranes, a 300–berth marina, sizeable hardstanding, a large club house with bar, terrace and dining facilities not to mention secure changing and showering facilities

HYC is ideally placed to host this Sportsboat Cup. Car parking, craning, berthing and trailer storage are all included in the entry fee and racing will be organised by top National and International Race Officers.

With no racing starting before 12 each day there will be ample time to freshen up in the morning after the great social that is planned for each evening.

Online Entry available by clicking the HYC advert at the top of the Afloat homepage.

#j24 – Britain's Ian Southworth and the crew of Il Riccio, have clinched a record-breaking sixth J24 Europeans title from two former World Champions and four other past European Champions in a 67 boat fleet, in a challenging series hosted by Yacht Club de Monaco. Just two months after staging the J24 Worlds at Howth in Dublin, there was no Irish entry competing.

With most races sub seven knots, competitors had to adjust to the effect of wind-blown tide, shifts of 30 degrees and complete breeze shut-downs. With depths of 200-300 metres across the race area, mark positioning and start-line holding added to the challenges.

Racing from the Yacht Club de Monaco, twenty years after it first held the J24 Europeans, sailors from Germany, Italy , Hungary, Monaco, Great Britain, France and Greece were joined by North American J24 ace, Mike Ingham and by four times World Champion, Mauricio Santa Cruz of Brazil. Former Italian World Champion, Andrea Casale led a serious challenge in Kong Easynet, with the Italian Navy team of La Superba, helmed by past European Champion, Ignazio Bonnano, pushing to improve their 8th place at the 2013 Worlds in Howth. German hopes were led by former European Champion, Peer Kock

The predominately light airs series presented multiple challenges both for the race crews and for the Race committee, led by Race Officer, John Coveney.

The il Riccio team used a 1996, J Boats Italy hull, race prepared by David Heritage in Cowes and Sparloft New Zealand rig. Sails were the same as the Howth Worlds, but with a change of genoa design to test the North San Diego, Tim Healey modification.

The womens' Europeans trophy was won by Germany's Ragna Thoennessen from Altona Yacht Club and her crew on Juelssand ,from Lea-Katrina Witt and the Hamburg German crew of Alice and Francesca Guzzo and her Monaco team, sailing Cool J.

Final top fiveL

1. Chris MacLaughlin (Il Riccio), GBR, 23 points
2. Mauricio Santacruz (Bruschetta), BRA, 49
3. Ian Ilsley (St Andrews Securities), MON, 51
4. Ignacio Bonanno (La Superba), ITA, 66
5. Dimitris Altsiadis (Evniki), GRE, 78

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