Irish Nationals 2018 had it all sun, wind, waves and tough competition!

Irish Nationals Open Champion 2018

Irish National Champion 2018

Irish Nationals U13 Champion 2018

Irish Nationals Jnr Open and National Champion 2018

The overall winner of the 2018 Davy Irish National and Open Championship was Kwinten Borghijs of Belgium. In second place and first Irish was Justin Lucas of RCYC. In the senior fleet it was literally a fight to the very last race to see who would be crowned the National Champion 2018. In the end there were three Irish sailors tied on points but it was Justin’s three bullets over the course of the four day event, which on count back won him the title of National Champion 2018. In 3^rd (2^nd Irish) place overall was Luke Turvey and in 4^th (3^rd Irish) place was James Dwyer Matthews, in 5^th (4^th Irish) was Rian Geraghty-McDonnell and in 6^th (5^th Irish) Sam Ledoux. First senior girl was Emily Riordan of RstGYC.

Best Jnr Irish Girl 2018

Best Snr Girl 2018

Rocco Wright of HYC & NYC was crowned the overall Junior Champion at the Irish Optimist Nationals! It was well deserved with Rocco getting 7 bullets over the four day event! 2^nd place went to Ben O’Shaughnessy of RCYC . 3^rd, 4^th, 5^th and 6th place went to Team GBR sailors Oscar Morgan-Harris, Finian Morris and George Creasy and Arwen Flur. Arwen Flur was also placed first Jnr girl overall. 3^rd Irish was Clementine van Steenberge (Clementine was also first Irish Girl), 4^th Irish was Jessica Riordan and 5^th Irish was Emmet Lucas.

Our regatta fleet sailors had an eventful 4 days and showed how brave they are at sailing in some challenging conditions. They managed to get a fantastic 12 races in over the four days and their top sailors were, 1^st place was local sailor Tadhg Cronin of KYC, 2^nd Oliver Means (GBR), 3^rd Lucy Pitman (GBR), 4^th Henry May (GBR) and 5^th Sienna Wright (HYC).

The top three sailors in Senior Silver were 1st Darragh Collins of RCYC, 2nd Andrew Conan of RstGYC and 3rd Joshua Delaney of LRYC. Ciara Paul was best Snr Silver Girl.

The Junior Silver top sailors were 1st Evan Darby of HYC, 2nd Riona McMorrow-Moriarty of TBSC (and best Jnr Silver Girl), 3rd Sam Coveney of RCYC and 4th was William Walsh of MBSC/TBSC.

Thank you to all the international sailors who travelled from England, Belgium, Caymen Islands, Spain, USA, Australia and Norway to Cork for the event. It was a pleasure to host you all. Also a really big thank you to Kinsale Yacht Club and in particular John Stallard and his team for organising a superb Nationals.

Congratulations to all the champions and all competitors, you sailed amazingly well in what were at times very challenging conditions. And off the water you were friendly and courteous. Only one more event on the Irish Optimist calendar 2018, so don’t forget to enter the Munsters!