On the weekend-past, 15-16 October, UCD Sailing club made the long journey to Dingle, Kerry for the Irish University Sailing Association (IUSA) Western Championships hosted by UCC at Dingle Sailing Club.

Famous for its natural beauty and a friendly dolphin called Fungie, not only was the first new sailing event of the year going to excite but so was he; jumping, playing and sometimes startling many a-boat. This weekend event was one of the 5 college team racing events held in the year, sailed in two-man Firefly dinghies.

Bright on Saturday morning, the 28 competing teams awoke to reasonable conditions, with gentle breeze and sunshine albeit with strong-spring tides. These factors would contribute to a challenging weekend racing. As it was the first of the year, all College 1st teams were in Gold, 2nd teams Silver with all others in Bronze. Possibly suffering from a little bit of in-preparation and inconsistent starting UCD 1 scored 3 wins from 5 races while in the silver fleet UCD 2 had a perfect day winning all their races and with it a place in Gold Fleet for Sunday. UCD 3 had a good day in Bronze, albeit with one very close UCD 4 encounter. They qualified for Bronze semi-finals while UCD 4 and UCD 5 who more than held their own, just missed out.

Sunday morning dawned somewhat cloudier than the beautiful end-of-day Saturday conditions and with medium-strong wind conditions. The conditions however were to fluctuate throughout the day with everything from moments of calm, to rain storms, to squalls and sun. Racing got underway earlier than Saturday with the round-robin series cut short to go straight into the Knock-out Finals stage. UCD 2 (moving up from Silver) was up 1st and lost a close quarter with UL.  UCD1 managed to win their ¼ final and book a place in the semi-final against the “Senior team” taking part. In the best-of-three encounter, after trading win for win in ever-changing conditions, it was to be a 1-race showdown. UCD at first thought they had it but the finish line had drifted too close to finish boat (near touching distance) and the umpires rules a re-sail. The Seniors were given a life-line and unfortunately they took it and won the final race, albeit in very close and suspect circumstances. However UCD 1 did finish 3rd overall and 2nd College Team, a decent start to the year!

The only other UCD team still taking part was UCD 3, and after winning their semi-final, they booked a place Vs NUIG 2. In what proved to be a close affair, UCD prevailed and with it won the Bronze Fleet. Nice job!

UCDSC would like to thank UCC for hosting and running a successful event, from the racing on the water to the social side off the water; they even organised the weather to play ball as well.

Final Results:

Gold Fleet: 3rd-UCD1

Bronze Fleet: 1st- UCD3

UCD1- Simon Doran and Don McCormack, Barry McCartin and Katie Curtin, Aidan McLaverty and Siabhra Walsh.

UCD3- Ciaran Hurney and Zoey Flood, Mark Boylan and Jennifer Dolan, Aileen Boylan and Muireann O’Sullivan.