SAILING/ROUND IRELAND RACE:ONE OF THE biggest fleets in recent years has gathered for tomorrow's 4pm start of the biennial BMW Round Ireland Race at Wicklow that will sail a 705-mile circumnavigation of Ireland. Big also describes some of the entrants including the largest ever yacht and a clutch of the world's best known offshore sailors.
The Ericsson Racing Team confirmed yesterday afternoon that Brazilian Olympic gold medallist Torben Grael would be competing on board Andres Soriano's 68-footer Allegre along with four of his key crew members. This will be one of the largest entries in the 46-boat fleet and sees the highly-rated team return to the home waters of her designer Mark Mills, who is based in Wicklow.
But all eyes will be on race veteran Mike Slade on board ICAP Leopard that measures 100 feet overall and is a certain bet for line honours and a new course record time to beat Colm Barrington's 1998 time of 76 hours, 53 minutes and 53 seconds. "I'm relatively confident that we can set a new record, probably in less than two and half days," Leopard captain Chris Sherlock said last night.
"It should be a nice quick race I think! But then again that's what the weather has been looking like and it will be Friday afternoon before we get a settled picture."
Based on latest weather data and predictions from their pre-race weather routeur Roger "Clouds" Badham, a forecast of 10 to 15 knots "on the wind" for the start will increase to 20 knots by midnight on Saturday.
For Leopard, and the other bigger entries, the current weather charts suggest the traditional round Ireland sleigh ride up the west coast from Sunday afternoon onwards.
And Sherlock's predictions didn't offer much hope for smaller boats hoping for overall victory on IRC handicapping. "At the moment it looks like the wind will drop after we finish on Tuesday so its going to be a big boat race between ourselves, Allegre and the Volvo 70-footer," he predicted.
That will be good news for Limerick's Ger O'Rourke as his VO70-footer, now named McConnells Chieftain, will be on its first competitive outing under his ownership.
So where does that leave the remainder of the line-up for the race? Well, at almost five-day estimates, the chances of a lull developing on the Irish Sea after the big boats finish could easily come forward and trap the leaders on the north coast at the notorious tidal gates at Rathlin or Mew Islands.
Such an outcome could easily see a repeat of the 2006 race that saw a calm for the first finishers but windy conditions for the back-markers that swept Eric Lisson around the course on Cavatina for his second victory on his aging Granada 38-footer.
Meanwhile, the Royal Ocean Racing Club was obliged to recall its overall winners trophy from Howth's Rosie, the Class Two winner of the British IRC National Championship at Cowes last weekend and award it instead to Conor and Denise Phelan's Jump Juice from the Royal Cork Yacht Club following an arithmetical error.
The Olympic Council of Ireland will today issue its finding in the case of the appeal against the Star class selection outcome for the Beijing Games: either Peter O'Leary and Stephen Milne's nomination will be accepted - or it won't.
branigan@indigo.ie
