A belated but very necessary congratulations to Ben on winning the All Ireland Championship held at Howth last October, and to his crew Joe Turner and Davie Taylor.
Threatening gales cut the event to just 1 day, and 7 races. The 16 strong fleet was split into 2 flights, and each flight raced 2 qualifying races in the ISA’s J80s. Ben was overall winner in flight 1. He took line-honours in race 1, and was 2nd in race 2, behind Cillian Dickson (J24, HYC). Noel Butler (Fireball) topped the flight 2, on joint points with Colin Byrne (ICRA 1, RIYC).
After a 2-hour postponement due to heavy wind, the finals were contested by the top 4 boats in each flight. Ben won the first 2, and was 2nd in the last – behind a very deserving Séafra Guilfoyle (Junior Winner, RCYC) who finished 2nd overall. It was Ben who took gold, however, on 5 points overall, and 4 points clear of Séafra.
It is massively encouraging for the class, and yet another sign of the quality of racing that we enjoy in the Irish SB20 fleet.
See the ISA website for more detail, and breakdown of the results.
Afloat has some nice photos of the day’s racing.