13 May Cork Harbour Combined League – Race 1

Last Friday night was the the first race of the new Cork Harbour Combined leagues.

The first race was run by Cove SC and the start line was between the committee vessel and East Ferry 2 channel marker. With a very testing force 5 blowing from WNW and a falling tide the fleet started and headed up to the first mark on the course, No 9. Kieran Dorgan helming his brother Finbarrs boat No Half Measures took a early lead but with a minor navigational hicccup then sailed straight past the next mark and in doing so handed the lead to Bandit Owned by Graham Marron and Kieran O Connell.

Just behind the leaders there was a close contest developing between the two J24’s – Jay owned by Liam and Pat Coakley and An tOileanach owned by Dave Lane and Sinead Enright. The J24s were closely followed by Fergus Coughlan’s Impala White Knight and just behind them was Re Eile the Moody owned by D. Ahern.

With Bandit moving in to pole position White Kight made a very strong move on the left side of the down wind leg and with even more navigation problems this time with Bandit, White Knight took the lead at the bottom mark with Bandit just inches behind and No Half Measures also right back in the mix, even after sailing almost an extra 200 yards by missing the top mark.

It was back up to the top mark for the last time with Bandit just managing to hold off No Half Measures and get ahead of White Knight crossing the finish line to take line honours. In handicap racing it is all about time and distance on the water (and a laptop). The first three boats crossed the finish line within 8 seconds of each other after racing for an hour and a summary of the corrected results are as follows,

In IRC

1st No Half measures

2nd Bandit

3rd White Knight

4th Jay

5th An tOileanach

6th Re Eile

In ECHO

1st White Knight

2nd Jay

3rd Bandit

4th An tOileanach

5th No Half Measures

6th Re Eile

Full Results will be available on the website shortly.

Unfortunately Bandit broke her mast the following day competing in another race and will probably miss the next two league races but with the entries rolling in from all the other boats that missed Fridays race it is looking like we might have 10 boats or more for the next race on the 30th of May hosted by the Royal Cork YC.

The league is open to all class 3 boats. If you are interested please contact Kieran O Connell (kieran3108@gmail.com) or Brendan Ryan  (brendan@covesailingclub.ie) for more information.