IRELAND’S ENTRY in the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race leaves Irish waters for the last time this weekend before its return to Galway next year as part of the prestigious international contest. A parade of sail will mark the Green Dragon departure from Dún Laoghaire at 4pm today, weather permitting.
The Volvo 70 yacht qualified for the race officially a week ago, when it completed a 2,000 nautical mile passage in the northeast Atlantic. The vessel and crew, skippered by Ian Walker, has been training from the Naval Base in Haulbowline, Co Cork, for two months, and visited its “home port” of Galway during Galway Race Week earlier this month.
The vessel, with an international crew that includes seasoned Irish round-world sailors Damien Foxall, Justin Slattery and Ian Moore, is bound for the race start in Alicante, Spain.
It will be met there by its shore team on August 30th, and the crew will undergo further training while the vessel’s fit-out is completed. The Irish entry’s “full livery and crew list” will be announced in Alicante in late September, and in-port racing starts on October 4th.
The international fleet leaves on its first leg of the 37,000 nautical mile race on October 11th, bound for the second stopover port in Capetown, South Africa.
The new race route includes Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, Rio de Janeiro, Boston, and Galway – the race’s first Irish stopover – in late May. It continues to Gothenburg and Stockholm, and finishes in St Petersburg on June 28th.
Some 140,000 visitors are expected in Galway during the fortnight stopover there from May 23rd, and Fáilte Ireland expects that the prestigious competition will generate €43 million for the local economy.
During the stopover there will be two weeks of festival, concerts, fairs, and in-port racing which can be viewed from Salthill’s promenade during the bank holiday weekend of May 30th/June 1st.
The Irish bid, which comes almost two decades after Ireland’s last entry in what was then the Whitbread round-the-world yacht race, has been backed by Let’s do it Global, a not for profit organisation established by Galway business interests to host the Galway Volvo Ocean Race stopover called “Let’s do it Galway” and support the Irish entry in the race.
