IUSA Team Racing event in Carrick-on-Shannon
by Trinity Sailing Club 17 Oct 2014 05:38 AEDT
11-12 October 2014
IUSA Team Racing event in Carrick-on-Shannon © IUSA
This year, the first event of the IUSA (Irish University Sailing Association) sailing calendar was hosted by Dublin University. This was held on the 11/12th October in Carrick-on-Shannon, a completely new location to the College Sailing world. In fact, after the weekend it was clear no one had ever sailed there before!
However, having the event in Carrick turned out to be a great decision. The location was great for all the different universities competing to travel to (UCD, DCU, RCSI, DIT, UCC, UL, NUIG) and the fact that we were sailing on a river meant that there were great viewing opportunities for the racing.
The teams were divided into three fleets – gold, bronze and silver. Teams, consisting of 3 boats, 6 people, raced against each other in a round robin, which would decide who went on to quarters, semis and finals.
Saturday morning started out disappointingly with no wind and fog. However by about 1pm this gave way to blazing sunshine and enough breeze to hold the first 25 races of the competition! The afternoon ended with music from our DJs Nick and Conor.
On Sunday, there was even less breeze than the previous day. Races that usually take 5-8 minutes took 25. However, our excellent race committee persevered and managed to complete another 25 races of the round robin. By this time, there was no time to move into quarter-finals, so we went straight to the finals of the gold fleet. For the silver and bronze fleets, the winner of the round robin became their overall winner.
There was a very close final between UCC1 and UCC3 for Gold. A great breeze kicked in for this race making it the most exciting of the weekend! UCC3 came out on top with a win in the first 2 races of the best-of-three finals.
TCD2, led by Club Captain Scott Flanigan, took third in the Gold Fleet.
TCD 3 and TCD 7 won Silver and Bronze respectively. TCD would like to thank our committee, race committee, helpers and Waterway Ireland for all their help making the event a success.