Sophie and Ruby’s 2024 Sailing Summer Adventures
By RIYC Cadets: Ruby Mulligan and Sophie Kelly (Aged 14 and 15 respectfully)
How it all began
We met in the summer of 2021. At that time we were both sailing Optimists. We became great friends and progressed through Teras and on to Fevas together.
Deciding to buy a Feva together
After sailing in a few Junior Regattas and chartering a Feva for the summer, the next step was to buy a Feva. We knew of one that was for sale in the RIYC, we took her for a spin and decided to close the deal!
Giving Feva Racing a go
The first Feva event that we did was The East Coast Championships. This event was held in Greystones . Unfortunately we did not get any racing during this event due to a lack of wind. However we had great fun at the country and western themed BBQ.
The next event was The Midland Championships in Lough Ree. This was the first time that either of us had raced on a lake.
The third event of the season was The National Championships, in Ballyholme Yacht Club. We stayed with some family friends from Northern Ireland. There was a lot of wind on the second day of this event. We finished all of the races apart from the last, where we had some gear issues and almost sank our boat. This was some great heavy weather experience but were glad to get back in for warm showers!
The final Feva event of the summer was The Southern Championships, held in Crosshaven, Co. Cork. We had lots of fun at this event and both agreed that this was our favourite event of the season! We raced in the Silver Fleet and placed third!
Junior Section 2024
This Summer we did three out of the four available courses for level 4s; Advanced Boot Handling, Kites and Wires and Adventure. All of these courses were different to each other but all of them were super fun to be on.
Our personal favourite was Adventure. We started off the week of the adventure course by learning about maps and coordinates. On the Tuesday we went camping on Dalkey Island, this was definitely a 2024 highlight for both of us!! We watched both the sunset and the sunrise.
Over the summer, we did a total of four weeks of Junior Section.
Elmo Cup
This was the first Team Racing event that either of us had done. We did a training session in advance that definitely helped to get us ready. On the day we sailed on the Fire Flys from the RSGYC. This was such a great experience as it was a completely different style of racing to what we had done in our Feva over the summer. A great part about the Elmo cup is the dinner on the Saturday night. We all ate in the dining room in the RSGYC and got very dressed up. This event attracts teenagers from all over the Country which makes it an extra fun event to be part of.
Plans for the Future
Our immediate plan for the future is do more events in our Feva.
We both hope to do the Transition Year course, when we are in TY, that is run across the three main Clubs in Dun Laoghaire. The TY course will hopefully help us on our path to becoming sailing instructors. The ultimate goal of becoming instructors is to do our J1 trips together and instruct sailing in the USA.
Thank you
We want to thank the Junior Committee in the RIYC for all of the work that they put in to running the various courses. We would like to thank all of the parents that volunteer their time to helping us to learn how to sail and get better at racing. Thank you to all of the instructors that we had over the summer. We would especially like to thank our Junior Organiser, Stephen Breen, for all of the time and effort that he puts into running the Cadet program for our Club.
See their photo gallery here