With less than 24 hours before the start of the Round Ireland yacht race things are starting to hot up. I will be sailing on board the Farr 60-footer “Newstalk for Adrenalin” and we are hoping to be in with a real chance of bringing home the bacon (silverware).
The crew is made up of a number of Irish sailors from the National Yacht Club and the Royal Irish Yacht club both in Dun Laoghaire and we will be 18 in total. Joe McDonald from The NYC will be our skipper. The race which starts and ends from Wicklow is over 700 nautical miles long and is the premier yacht race in Ireland. The event is held every two years is not for the faint-hearted.
The race is uniquely identified by a series of waypoints around the Irish coast at which the competitors much report their position and time. While the introduction of GPS tracking in 2008 provides competitors and followers with up-to-date progress of the fleet, the check-in waypoints are a key feature to stay up-to-date on progress, giving competitors morale boosting race milestones and, most importantly, are an integral safety element of the race. We will be bringing you an up-to-date actual position of our boat in real time on www.newstalk.ie/adrenalin.
Picking up Newstalk for Adrenalin
We left on Saturday night and flew to Southampton to pick up the yacht which has just returned from the Caribbean. After a 'getting to know you' session (some of us have not sailed together before) and a few pints in a trendy bar we retired to an Indian restaurant for a meal and a few more pints to discuss strategy.
Early the next morning we took the high speed ferry to Cowes on the Isle of White and we were amazed to see the spectacle of hundreds of boats racing in the Solent as the “Round the Island Race" (a famous event where boats race around the isle of white) was on the previous day and had 1300 boats entered.
The boat “Venomous” renamed “Newstalk for Adrenalin” for our race was awaiting us down at the marina and what a beauty she is. A Farr 60 (60 foot long) she is a racing machine with really elegant lines she is built for performance and she didn’t disappoint.
Our crossing from Cowes to Greystones was over 360 miles long and we completed the delivery trip in 51 hours in light winds. That is just more than half the distance we will have to do from Saturday and it was good practice. We got to test the boat in light winds which are forecast for next week and every one of the crew familiarised ourselves with our role on board.
She is a wonderful boat and we as a crew can’t wait to race her. We sailed through two nights and saw some amazing sights of beauty. Off Landsend we saw a whale, we were also joined by a number of dolphins as we approached tuskar rock off the Wexford coast. Both the sunsets and sunrises were spectacular and it’s hard to describe the absolute beauty of these times when you have now sight of land only sea.
Dawn off Tuskar Rock - Taken from Newstalk for Adrenalin at 5am on Wednesday morning
The boat arrived safely in Greystones at 4pm where we were welcomed by the BJ Marine owner Bernard Gallagher and the new Greystones marina manager Alan Corr.
As there is no drink on board we had to mark our arrival with a few pints at the Beach House pub in Greystones.
Hopefully we will get a bit of practice between now and Saturday but time is running out.
I will be talking to Margaret Ward who is standing in for me on Down to business on Saturday at 11.20 and I will be reporting in to OFF The Ball every evening during the race starting Saturday until we finish. I have got a crash course in marine broadcasting equipment and I will have my fingers crossed that everything works okay.
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