Royal Cork sailors proved their first-day results were no flash in the pan when they appeared at the top of the 1720 leaderboard yesterday after four races in the inaugural European championship. Mark Mansfield's win in the protest room against British Olympic silver medallist Ben Ainslie's boat has secured his overall lead by a single point but only after two more high-wind races yesterday when management on the 1720 course of Ford Cork Week was stretched at the seams. Last night, competitors were calling for the starting line to be shortened after the fourth race got under way with a line bias estimated to be over 30 degrees.
"We could barely cross the line on starboard," said Garrett Connolly, sailing on fourth overall Mizzen in Action (Richard Burrows). The fleet filed out to the right-hand side of the course yesterday afternoon but the majority of the 63-boat fleet soon found that they were able to lay the windward mark in one tack. Such a one-sided course inevitably led to something of a procession around the figure-four course but blustery south-west winds, gusting to 25 knots, allowed for planing downwind and there were spectacular duels for pole position among the Sportsboat division where John Storey's Atara, with international tactician Tom Dodson aboard, dominated with a first and second placing.
Ainslie (21), sailing as a tactician with Waterford's Tommy Murphy on board After Midnight, is one of two British medallists in the 1720 fleet. The partnership between the Hamble-based Laser medallist and the Dunmore East sailor produced a ninth and third place to yield an eighth overall, two points behind Ainslie's Olympic team-mate Ian Walker, who crewed the late John Merricks to silver in Atlanta. Walker, sailing with Robert Dix on Daylight Robbery, in seventh place is over 20 points adrift of the leader with a discard yet to come.
A second day of heavy-air racing has done nothing to dampen the spirits of the 5,000 crew crammed into Crosshaven as near-gale force westerlies swept the 667-boat fleet to the completion of a full racing schedule so far. In class zero, Richard Loftus's Swan 65 Desperado has performed to expectation in the heavy airs off Roches Point and now leads the 32boat fleet by two points after three races. Despite a broken jib halyard during the first outer loop Olympic race yesterday and a broken winch in the afternoon, Tony Mullins nursed his chartered 40-footer Barlo Plastics to a fourth and second place respectively to lie in third overall behind Noonmark VI sailed by Sir Geoff Mulcahy.
In the smaller class six fleet, the National Yacht Club's John Hall maintained his consistent form.
