6 final races in the gold fleet and 4 in the siver were races within the last two days to deliver a pretty solid championship. We were not concerned by the fight at the front involving Dutch sailor GOEDHART Pieter (ultimately champion), Breton local star RUAL Lucas and the Carribeans FORTUNE brothers but we had our own challenges.
In the gold fleet, Peter McCann was the most consistent on the Thursday scoring two top 30 despite average starts. Conor Murphy was on fire with superb starts. However he got involved in too many messy mark rounding and could not get out of them clear. the ever consitent Philip Brownlow kept clocking mid fleet results… The excitment of the day came from the silver fleet with Aodh Kennedy who showed great maturity leaving his disapointment not to make gold by having a solid day at the front of silver… 4 top ten later (8th, 2nd, 10th & 6th) he took the lead of the fleet. The girls Cliodhna, Amy and Katherine were in fighting mood delivering solid races… and a few BFDs.
Division 1 Fleet Results – Gold and Silver
Division 2 Fleet Results – (Irish boats in second group at bottom)
The breeze picked up a good bit on friday and the silver fleet was sent back ashore and depite dispointed not to race in the big breeze, Aodh commented the decision as “the easiest way of maintaining my (his) lead”. Despite having been sick all night and feeling weak, Peter courageously launched after a few hesitation but with the increasing breeze could not find the energy and had to go in early. Philip started the day by a brilliant 14th before paying the energy used just about finishing the second race. Conor was then the best finisher in the 25-30 kts last race in 42nd.
Overall, Alex Rumball was our best finisher in 46th, closely followed by Peter (55th), Philip (59th) and Conor (61st) and Cian was 83rd.
Aodh (91st) won the silver. Brendan Lyden (11th) was consistent enough but could not find that extra gear. Tadgh Donnelly (137th), Amy Clarke (146th) and Xander Morrisson (150th) paid a slow start… Cliodhna O Regan (152nd) and Katherine Geoghegan (153rd) had a few solid finishes but paid their impatience on the start line by 3 BFDs each.
Eoin and and Sean sailed 3 extra races on thursday to put the total at 10. Sean was pretty solid and climbed to 5th overall whilst Eoin faded a little and dropped to 12th. This was a good result for the two sailors who are definitely to watch for the future.
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