#sywc – Keeping the top student sailing teams together is a challenging task, as the usual three to four year period at university means that personnel turnover is inevitably rapid writes WM Nixon. Then too, it has to be remembered that students are at university in the hope of getting a degree, so at times the demands of preparing for exams have to take precedence over sport.
This situation has resulted in the Irish campaigns in the week-long Student Yachting Worlds – which begin this weekend at Pornic in Brittany – becoming something of a local derby between Dun Laoghaire and Howth.
Defending champions UCD – who had a runaway win in the series in France last year – did so under the umbrella of the Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire, which put so much in the way of boat availability, facilities and coaching towards helping the UCD team beforehand that their success contributed to Royal St George becoming the Mitsubishi Motors "Club of the Year".
With their win, it meant that UCD have a place as of right in this year's Worlds. There has been a change of format for the event, which will now be sailed in J/80s, resulting in a more compact crew which in UCD's case will be drawn from all over Ireland, but currently focus on Dun Laoghaire in their sailing. The team is Philip Doran (Courtown), Ben Fusco (Kinsale), Bella Morehead (Cork), Sophie Murphy (Strangford Lough), and Conor Murphy (Howth), while UCDSC Commodore Vinnie Varley (Malahide) is travelling as reserve.
UCD already having a place, the other Irish universities were then entitled to compete for the position of national representatives. This series was sailed on Saturdays in April at Howth in J/80s , and University of Limerick skippered by Rob O'Leary were winners. But by August, it was becoming clear that any hopes of a UL team getting itself together again and going to France were very slim, so the baton was passed to Dublin City University, who had been runners-up in the selections series, helmed by Ryan Scott of Howth.
But as with the other colleges, DCU's team were scattered far and wide by August, with many of them likely to stay so. However, consultation with the organizers revealed a fairly liberal set of rules regarding the selection of team personnel, and in the end Team Ireland DCU has been built entirely around the junior membership of Howth YC.
The core of the crew is still the winning DCU squad, but other colleges are involved. Ryan Scott (DCU) is helm, while mainsheet/tactician is Shane Giviney (DCU). Tactical input can also be expected from mid-boat crew Diana Kissane (TCD) and Sam O'Byrne (also TCD), while the bowman is Luke Malcolm (Dublin Institute of Technology).
This Howth College team (there actually was a third level College of Howth once upon a time, but that was back in the late Mediaeval era) have had only a few weeks to get organised on a training programme and seek some action. Yet they were on the upward graph in the recent British Match Racing Series in J/80s when the final day's racing had to be scrubbed, despite which they placed four overall.
The Student Yachting Worlds 2013 have attracted teams from fifteen counries, including Japan and China, with Dalhousie representing Canada while the Naval Academy in Annapolis sails for the US. The event gets under way from October 12th, and there's an inaugural Crew Dinner when each team is expected to provide a dish representative of their national cuisine, while racing is from October 14th to 19th.
