James Espey
Photo by Nils Bergmann

After four days of racing at the Laser World Championships in Germany, Ballyholme Yacht Club sailor James Espey achieved Olympic qualification for the Irish team when he made the Gold fleet in Day 4 of the event.

Espey scored 7, (29), 3, 20, 18, 17, 22 and 19 to make the Gold division. He now lies in 30th position in the 168 strong fleet. By virtue of the fact there are only six unqualified nations in the Gold fleet and there are 12 places on offer at this event Espey can be satisfied with a job well done.

Belfast Harbour Marina Hosts City’s Largest Yacht Gathering

Lough to Lagan

The largest flotilla of yachts ever assembled in Belfast Lough took place on Sunday, 6th May to help officially open Belfast Harbour’s new marina.

Over 60 boats sailed up the Lough into the new facility at Abercorn Basin in the heart of Titanic Quarter.

Ain Mara
Photo courtesy of Alan Aston

The 36 ft yawl Ain Mara celebrates her 100th birthday this year and her owner, Dickie Gomes plans to take part in Royal Ulster’s 50th Anniversary Ailsa Craig race in June.

Built in 1912 at Ringsend in Dublin, Ain Mara was originally a Gaff yawl constructed of pitch pine on oak and in 1930 was converted to Bermuda rig. She was bought by the Gomes family in 1965.

Dates: Between 11–15, 18-22, and 25-29 June 2012 inclusive

Times: : BETWEEN 0900 BST AND 1800 BST.

Location of jammers: Land based within 5km of N52° 00.881’ W003° 38.518’ (SN873365 – Dixie’s Corner)

Frequency: 24 MHz bands centred around 1176.45 MHz (GPS L5), 1227.60MHz (GPS L2) and 1575.42MHz (GPS L1).

Total Power: Up to 10 Watts EIRP. Whenever possible the transmissions will be at lower powers.

It is stressed that, as in previous exercises, Safety of Life operations will at all times take precedence over exercise activities.

In 2012 Derry-Londonderry will host the homecoming leg of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race 2011/2012. Plans are already well in place to celebrate this achievement and we aim to transform the city into a huge Maritime Festival between June 29th – 8th July 2012.

Sunday 26th February was much warmer than previous weeks and the wind was just strong enough so that there was the odd capsize but nothing to major that our sailors would not be able to handle it. The wind shifted a lot to start with from going from the south west through to the south east. Nevertheless the race got underway from the north east mark and the course was course 4 to begin with.

The weather just keeps getting better for us on Sundays. This week it looked like there would be no breeze at all and yet it filled in just in time for us to launch and in the end it was great racing. Good numbers in all fleets made it a spectacle for those watching from the shore. Even Johnny Webb came down to cast his eye over proceedings, but only after getting a top 10 finish in a bike race during the morning. Maybe he wanted to make sure we all knew about THAT rather than his amazement at the numbers of boats on the water, whatever.... it was great to see him back in the dingy park.

Ballyholme and Royal Ulster Yacht Club sailor, James Espey has been campaigning to go to the Olympics in Weymouth this summer. As part of his campaign he is hosting a Fundraising Day Saturday 18 February at BYC. This will include a day of coaching and racing, then and an evening party. The coaching will be taken by James him self and a guest coach. All the top Laser sailors will be racing – come along and pace yourself against the best Laser sailors in the Northern Ireland.

Sunday saw the return of the BYC Icebreaker series - and icebreaker it was. The wind was 15, or so, knts with a wind chill of -7. To make matters worse the wind direction was South Easterly which provided some really helpful shifts on the way up the beats. This lead to more than one capsize to weather !!!. Quite a few of us spent some time in the water which was, to say the least, refreshing!!

Swedish tidal energy company Minesto has now finished this period of testing of a scale model of the Deep Green kite tidal power plant, in Strangford Lough, Ballyhenry Bay, about 1.5 km northwest of Portaferry, Co. Down.

BelfastCoastguard have put in place a one mile exclusion zone within Belfast Lough to facilitate a ship to ship oil transfer taking place on 31st Dec 2011

Co-ordinates are as follows:

54º 42.5N

005º 34.5W

Further updates can be obtained by listening to Belfast Coastguard @ Channel 16

Last year, Ballyholme YC was covered in snow and ice and the Boxing Day Regatta was in jeopardy due to the difficulty of launching the RIBs down treacherous slips. This year, Ballyholme was experiencing the warmest Christmas on record although the warm south-westerly breeze also promised gusts up to 40 knots.

Last Sunday saw the conclusion of Part 1 of this year's Ballyholme Yacht Club "StenaLine" Icebreaker series. The event has been a great success so far with only 2 weekends un-sailable due to weather. The numbers have been huge with 44 Laser standards, 15 laser radials, 7 laser 4.7's and 28 Toppers as well as the large dinghy and multihull fleets - all regularly in contention.

The International Formula 18 Catamaran European Championships were held in the Real Cub Nautico de Gran Canarias in Las Palmas from 7th to 11th December, with Ballyholme and Royal Ulster Yacht Clubs Andrew Gallagher and Catherine Gunning representing Ireland in the 85 boat fleet. After successfully defending the top mixed team trophy at the UK F18 Nationals in August, the pair were aiming for a solid position within the top 40 and within the top 5 mixed teams.

The 2011 ISAF world championships started with a bang in Perth on the 3rd of December, the fire works where flying and INXS where rocking.

All the teams were involved in the opening ceremony in the centre of Perth where the local dignitaries commented on how wonderful it was to have over a 1000 athletes competing from over 100 countries and for once they weren’t wrong. The city had been working very hard at making this one of the greatest ISAF world championships in history, no expense was spared.