SAILING:THE OVERALL winner of the Irish Sea Offshore series (Isora) 2012 will be decided after a final 80-mile race from Pwllheli in North Wales to Dún Laoghaire tomorrow.
It is certain a J109 skipper will lift Isora’s Wolf’s Head trophy tomorrow evening because any one of three of these potent 36-foot keelboats is in the mix for overall honours in the 33-boat fleet.
The exhaustive 10-race offshore series started in early May and included June’s Round Ireland 700-mile race.
Although it has been a season of J boat domination on the Irish Sea there is acknowledgment too that the series sailed without defending champion Raging Bull, Matt Davis’s Sigma 400, wrecked off the coast of Skerries during May gales.
In all likelihood tomorrow’s 10-race series (with a generous four discards) will go to overall leader Sgrech, Stephen Tudor’s Welsh entry, but John Maybury’s sistership Joker II from Dublin Bay is only 25 points adrift on 512.7 points.
Both boats have had a formidable presence this season, punching above their weight, particularly on long upwind legs.
The offshore series uses the high points scoring system – so a winning result with a good final race turn-out for either Joker or third-placed J109 club-mate Jedi (Andrew Sarratt) can tip the balance for a Dublin win.
The fleet starts tomorrow at 8am off the Clwb Hwylio Pwllheli Sailing Club line and given the forecast of light but building winds during the day it could be 10pm or later before the overall winner is back in the National Yacht Club house.
The next offshore outing for Isora fans is Royal Malta’s Rolex Middle Sea Race 2012 in six weeks’ time. Two Isora boats are entered in to the 60-boat fleet drawn from 14 countries. Dún Laoghaire’s Galileo (Tony Tennyson/Seán Lemass/Des Keliher) are sailing in class IV with a crew of 12 drawn from several Isora boats. Former Ostar class winner Barry Hurley from the Royal Irish YC (RIYC) is entered as a double-hander in his JOD35, Dinah.
Another J109, Pat Kelly’s Storm from Howth, was the winner of the inaugural staging of the RIYC’s September series on Dublin Bay last weekend.
The Dún Laoghaire club extended the Dublin summer sailing season when it ran a new September regatta weekend that incorporated results from the DBSC series as well as the DMYC series that run concurrently on the bay. Two quarter-tonners from the host club were first and second in Class III, Jonathan Skerritt’s Quest, winning from club-mate Ken Lawless’s Supernova on IRC Handicap.
Storm, the current cruiser-racer boat of the year, will be back in action off Ireland’s Eye on Sunday racing for the Heineken Trophy and overall honours in Howth Yacht Club’s autumn league. The six-race schedule has over 100 entries in nine classes.
As in previous years, the White Sails Division accounts for the largest entry with 22 boats competing while the Puppeteers and Class 3 will have competitive fleets of 16 and 14 respectively.
The successful format of six round-the-cans races will be repeated, with five successive Sundays and the final day’s racing on Saturday, October 20th.
