Optimists in France – Day 2

Apologies for the late update! Life has been pretty full on in Loctudy these last few days and internet access not the easiest to get.

465 boats in total! This is big…

The international division one fleet has a superb 178 boats entered. Everyone in this fleet had to qualify. Team Ireland is battling the best French, the Dutch world team, a excellent entry from Belgium, the top Swiss team, the large GBR armada, the ever improving Monaco and two visitors from far away (Brazil and Canada).

The team was welcomed in France by my sister and after a bit of running around they eventually concluded measurement and registration to go for a short training session. I arrived the Saturday night. Practice race was well used and tidal information taken.

The serious racing started with a very long and difficult day in 8-12 kts from a south westerly direction. The Irish were a little slow to get themselves into racing mode and they got surprised by the speed of the fleet. Aodh Kennedy (22nd) and Cian Byrne (26th) were the fastest to cop on!

The second race delivered the first couple of smiles with a superb display from Cian who fought well to take 7th. Conor Murphy reacted like a champion when he took 10th after the most dreadful initial race (last, actually). Alex Rumball took eventually 12th after keeping for most of the race inside the top 10.

It was getting late; it did not stop our OOD to starting a third race. Peter McCann finally delivered a race to the level of his talent taking a well fought 8th. Overall Cian was best IRL in 30th after a superb save on the last race when he picked 50 places back on the last beat!

Sean Donnelly and Eoin Lyden are racing in the second division. Both were top 10 in the 80 boats fleet after 4 races, Sean having taken two Bullets already.

Today the days started with team racing. With 40 teams entered today was a qualifying round with direct elimination. The 3 Irish teams (RCYC, KYC and Dublin Bay) did not stress out and won their initial challenge to qualify into the next round. 24 teams are now still in contention. So far Team Dublin, the Dutch team, the Swiss team and the French world team have been the most impressive on the water.

We carried on with two more races. It was not to be the greatest day. Peter (14th), Alex (18th) and Aodh (22nd) were our best finishers in the first race. the results of the second race were not up at 10pm but Conor is our best finisher around the 20th position followed by Xander and Alex in the late 20s. Peter was unlucky to catch seaweed just off the start line and fought well to recover mid fleet.

Tomorrow we will sail the long off shore race (Early start) followed by the team racing in the afternoon.

Coach out… I promise I will try to come back ASAP for more

Full results are available here (though it can take them some time to put them up).

Updated Irish Results: