In top international championship racing, with 9 completed of 10 races planned over five days, Monday to Friday, 26 to 30 August, Joey Kelly’s JOG, helmed by Michael McCaldin, emerged best of the six local LEYC boats, at 22nd overall.

    Her best result was a fifth place in Thursday’s sixth race, sailed in a fresh breeze, and her other crew were Michael Whaley, Edward Beattie and Bertie Forsythe. LEYC best crew, Joey’s Old Geezers, JOG, were Irish National J/24 Champions in 2000, and have won or taken top places in other Irish J/24 championships for many years past.

    JOG’s crew do better as the wind gets harder, but were hampered in Friday’s two races in stronger winds by a collision during the day’s first race with a boat from the Bridlington J/24 fleet in Yorkshire. This boat failed to give way in a port and starboard tack incident and, when JOG altered course to avoid her, she turned into JOG’s path and made collision inevitable. JOG got a hole in her bow and the other boat got a damaged rudder, broke her tiller, used for steering, and went out of control. At the protest hearing after Friday’s racing, the Yorkshire boat was disqualified. However, JOG finished only 27th in that race, when she went on after the collision, but achieved a better 16th place, with the bow hole taped up but it still let in a hampering weight of water to slop in her bilge in the final very windy ninth race.

    Diarmuid O’Donovan, a Kerryman working in Fermanagh, is J/24 Fleet Captain at LEYC. In the weeks leading up to the event he worked hard to ensure that all six boats in his fleet had the correct measurement certificates required for racing in this the world’s largest and most widespread one-design keelboat class. With hull and sails measured, and thus the boats all the same, success depends on preparation and crew skills, sailing, boat handling and race tactics.

    So it was very well deserved that Diarmuid O’Donovan had such an excellent event at the helm of Virjin, with crew Dermot Clarke, Chris Scott, June Clarke, and Rob Larke, from England. He has owned Virjin for just four months past. She was well prepared beforehand,and very well handled by her crew in the event. With Diarmuid first time helming at this level, Virjin at first emerged best overall of the 26 Irish boats, north and south, competing after the four races, on Monday and Tuesday, sailing in moderate winds, sparkling sunshine, shorts and shades, perfect yachting weather.

    Virjin’s best race was the fourth. She led the whole fleet round the first three marks of the course, her crew excited, delighted, yet their teamwork still smooth, and looking back at all the 50 other boats all astern. Up the windward legs there was cheering from LEYC and other Irish boats passing downwind to the buoy that Virjin had just rounded. Eventually one then another of the top boats got past, the fourth, an English boat tacking in Virjin’s wind to hold her off just a hundred metres before the finish, where Virjin crossed the line in a close fifth. A superb sailing experience.

    On Wednesday, in a fickle, shifty, unreliable wind, the fleet spent five hours afloat waiting for Race Officer, Tony Gorman, to find conditions suitable for fifth and sixth races, before all was abandoned for the day. Wednesday races were rescheduled to Thursday and Friday, three each day, not two, to make up the 10 planned for the championship.

    The most exciting part of big J/24 fleet racing is the starts, to windward over a line exactly across the wind between the Race Officer’s boat and a buoy laid at a distance away greater that the total lengths of all the boats, 51 times 24 feet, or about 400 metres for this fleet. A preparatory signal is made five minutes before the start, others at four and one minute, and each boat aims to be crossing that line at full speed at, or barely seconds after, the start signal.

    A start line with over fifty J/24s, in brisk wind and waves, is like a nineteenth century cavalry charge, tense shouting, striving for speed, the front line, and yet clear of other boats close alongside. Any boat even slightly behind soon falls back as wind is blocked from its sails. When too many cross too early, and it happens, there is a general recall, and next time a black flag signals that any boat over the line in the final minute is disqualified. This happened to Rob Henshall, LEYC in Jurassic, in the fourth race, with crew Aidy Kelly, Ashley Hunter, Alan Owens and Jon O’Neill.

    Jurassic’s big disaster came in Friday’s windy eighth race, crew adrenaline in full flow. Her mast’s back stay came loose, so when she rounded a windward mark, let free the mainsail and they hoisted her big spinnaker, it opened pulling strongly in a hard squall and the mast, lacking backstay, collapsed forward at two metres above the deck. Her crew cleared away the damage, collected it on deck, and, using her outboard motor, returned to dock. Jurassic’s best finish was 39th in the second race, and with the disqualification and missing two races, she ended 50th overall.

    John Mulholland’s Jasper, with James Murphy, LEYC’s GP14 Dinghy Fleet Captain, at the helm, had a good event, best result 23rd in Thursday’s windy seventy race, and ending overall 43rd and fourth among the LEYC six. All a whole new experience for a keen young crew, Warren Cooper and brothers Mark and David Taylor form Enniskillen.

    Tim Rippey in Jet, with John McCrea, Patricia Compton, Jo Thompson and John Loughran, ended 49th overall, just ahead of Jurassic, and her best place was a 32nd in the final race, which ended in near gale westerly squalls.

    One LEYC boat, Jeriatrix, was entered as a women’s crew, defined in the Notice of Race as a crew majority women, including helm, trimmer and foredeck. Anne Marie Shewfelt, Toronto, Canada, an email contact, was helmswoman and skipper, Sandra Dillon, Dublin Bay, trimmer, with regular crew Judy Anderson foredeck, and deck crew Olivia Cosgrove, Enniskillen, fresh back from famine relief work in Malawi, and owner Michael Clarke.

    Sunday’s practice race was where these women first met as a crew. A 22nd place in Monday’s second race, and a 20th in Tuesday’s fourth race were best results, achieved where the handicap of being 74Kg under maximum crew weight to ballast the boat mattered less in the moderate breezes early in the week. Thursday and Friday’s windier conditions were difficult at times. Despite Anne Marie Shewfelt’s excellent helming, and good crew deckwork, they simply lacked body weight on the rail to hold the boat down for power against the heeling effect of the stronger winds, yet still achieved creditable results, the best of which was 35th in that very windy final race. Anne Marie modestly charging to the finish in a 32 knot squall, boat heeled right over, big genoa sail straining, and lightweight crew leaning hard over the side to keep her up. On Friday’s spinnaker runs, when some boats, men crewed, were knocked down, Anne Marie’s neat steering and sharp crew work kept Jeriatrix fast and stable. Enormous fun and women power at its best.

    So much so, that Anne Marie Shewfelt has entered her own boat in the North American Women’s J/24 Championship, in Cleveland, Ohio, later in September, and has recruited these other three Jeriatrix women as crew. They are busy this week arranging leave from work and travel to Ohio for this top women’s J/24 event, 14 to 18 September.

    Moreover, the girls’ good work gained Jeriatrix the distinction of being the only LEYC boat home with a trophy. The International J/24 Class has two perpetual European Championship trophies, the main trophy itself, and an Old Boat trophy, which was awarded to Jeriatrix, first launched 1980, best of the old boats, 36th overall in this European Championship, 14th among the 26 Irish, and third LEYC boat. Owner Michael Clarke had to buy a new hat.