Record Fastnet Race Challenge Taken Up By Ten Irish Boats
21st January 2021
Paul O Higgins champion JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI in action off the West Cork coast in Calves Week. She has raced round or past the Fastnet Rock several times in other events, but this year the star Dun Laoghaire boat will be doing the Rolex Fastnet Race itself for the first time
Credit: Robert Bateman
If anyone in the Royal Ocean Racing Club s suite of race offices was bothered by the thought that the 2021 change of course in the club s core event, the biennial Fastnet Race, was going to have a detrimental effect on entries, they didn t show it. And there was no need to worry, for within an hour of the list s electronic opening, it was already banging up against the 400-boat ceiling.
19th December 2020
The National YC s biennial Volvo Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race, currently scheduled for June 9th 2021, could become symbolic of the emergence from pandemic. The start of 2019 s race shows overall winner Paul O Higgin s JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI (left) showing briefly ahead of Mick Cotter s 94ft line honours winner and new course record-setter Windfall
Credit: Afloat.ie/David O Brien
In normal times, the yearly Irish sailing fixtures list is a reasonably harmonious programme based around annual or biennial pillar events of various types and sizes, an ongoing succession of regattas and championships which slot together in a reasonably meaningful structure which is dictated by traditional times of the year, and the needs of the bigger one design classes – particularly the dinghies – to find a location which will accommodate them for their annual national championship.