Irish Fireball Open at Killaloe Sailing Club

A challenging weekend on the water

The Irish Fireball fleet, minus those boats in transit from Barbados, descended on Killaloe at the southern end of Lough Derg for the season-opening regatta, the Open Championships. Hosted by the Killaloe Sailing Club for the first time in quite a few years, but based at the University of Limerick’s Activity Centre, the event attracted an excellent entry of 25 boats considering there were some significant absentees.

A large percentage of the fleet was home-based and the racing on the water was soon to validate the training sessions that Neil Colin and others have conducted both in Killaloe and Dun Laoghaire, when participants in those sessions featured in excellent individual race performances and overall positions.

Race Officer Liam Moloney and his team on the water had a very challenging weekend as the winds were light and on Sunday in particular, variable. Having said that, seven races were sailed when Race 3 was ordered to be re-sailed after a protest! The lightness of the breeze presented the fleet with the need for heightened awareness of wind on the water and meant that decisions on which way to go were much more significant than when the wind is more vigorous!

The new combination of Shane McCarthy & Noel Butler provided the element of consistency that these conditions demand to win by a comfortable margin of 4 points, but in terms of individual race wins they only took half the races. However, a discard of a 3rd shows how well these two sailed in the trying conditions.

The other race wins were shared by Neil Colin & Margaret Casey, who finished second overall, Louis McKenna & Hermine O’Keeffe, who took third and Simon McGrotty & Ruairi Grimer who finished fourth overall. Colin/Casey had a very good series after discarding a tenth, while McKenna/O’Keeffe surprised everyone with the consistency of their boats peed all weekend allowing them to win one race and add three other top four positions to their points tally.

Jim Ryan & David Tanner from the host club also hit a purple patch, scoring a 2nd, a 5th and a 6th to be the first local boat in 5th overall. Jon Evans & Aidan Caulfield led the fifth race of the regatta and only just lost out on the finish line to Butler/McCarthy. Other excellent race performances came from Marie Barry who counted three top ten finishes, Susie Coot & Christope LeScornet, in the Silver fleet who also scored three top ten finishes, Mary Chambers & Brenda McGuire who got a 9th in the last race and Derval O’Carrol & Siobhan Hayes who scored an eighth in Race 2. All these combinations were attendees at recent training sessions and this weekend saw the fruits of that training.

Saturday evening was spent in Crotty’s in Killaloe where the fleet enjoyed superb hospitality and lots of craic having pre-booked their meals for the evening at registration that morning. A traditional three-piece band played in the background keeping us distracted while with one eye on the TV screen we watched Ireland’s entry to Eurovision drop further and further down the scoreboard.

Having sailed four races on the Saturday, we appeared to be set up for an early finish on the Sunday when only two races were required to make up the series. However, with Race 3 thrown out on a technicality, three races were sailed on Sunday, before our guillotine on start times kicked in and a full six race series was completed.

The prevailing conditions meant that races were short and they may not have been to everyone’s taste, but in truth the race team did everything they could to get a regatta in and they couldn’t be faulted for effort.

The regatta also saw the competitive debut of our newest Fireball, 15018, a home built wide-bow in wood by Martin O’Toole. As the results below show, Martin and his crew Shane scored a 5th in one race.

Prizes for the event were provided by McWilliam’s Sailmakers and due thanks were offered to all those who had sponsored and contributed to the hosting of the event.

Overall Results: (top three)

The next event on the Irish Fireball regatta circuit is the Ulsters, hosted by East Down Yacht Club on Strangford Lough on the weekend of 19/20th June.