National Yacht Club

Six of our optimist sailors travelled to Galway from the 2nd to the 5th of July for the Volvo Optimist Team Racing Event. Heather Spain, Evie Byrne, Dara Donnelly, Conor Kneafsey, Hugh Perrette and Loghlen Rickard were amongst the top 32 sailors at the trials which qualified for this exciting event.  The NYC group of six participants was one of the larger clubs represented at the Team Racing Academy. Every race stop-over port of the Volvo Ocean Race hosted an Academy Team Racing clinic. The weather was very changeable and the lack of wind prevented much “on the water” coaching and racing from occurring although this was substituted with classroom time run by world renowned team racing expert and international umpire Chris Atkins. However, the fleet were lucky enough to get out on the water on 2 of the 3 days. The highlight of the trip was a tour of the Galway Race Village and an invitation to Volvo Pavilion. During their time at Volvo Pavilion the sailors got to meet the Volvo Open 70 Race sailors and hear first-hand about their experiences during the race. They got to watch exciting on-board footage from the race and ask some of the skippers and crew from Groupama, Telefónica, Camper, Abu Dhabi, PUMA and Sanya any questions they liked. All the sailors said that their knowledge of team racing strategy and rules expanded considerably and they all felt they benefited greatly from it. The idea of the trip was to cultivate interest in these young sailors to grow up and become future Volvo Ocean racers! The end of the trip was topped off by an excellent and informative tour of Ireland’s Green Dragon given by NYC’s own Will Byrne.