Rankin Worlds RCYC 29/30 June 2024
by Maurice Kidney
What a fantastic weekend Racing in Cork Harbour. Twenty-four Rankins participated over the two days.
Race co-ordinator Peter Crowley and his team set some tremendous courses that challenged the fleet and made for some very interesting races. The details of the races and positions of boats can be followed on the brilliant three-part coverage on the Rankin page from Afloat Magazine (part 1 🔗; part 2 🔗; part 3 🔗 ) which has always given great encouragement to the Rankin events. Lovely photographs again from Bob Bateman.
The two Sunday races provided some great novelty and fun. A race to the beach on Spike Island, where the empty bucket marked with the boat number had to be placed on a picnic bench to determine the boats finishing position. The race up the beach with the bucket was so entertaining with some boats swapping positions, beaten by those more fleet of foot. The second race was started off from the beach with a crew member running to their boat with a bucket of stones and heading across to their Rankin to round a mark off Kidney’s strand, the site of the old Rankin workshop. This final race of the series finished at RCYC marina.
All of the above included some very competitive sailing where some of the top helms in the Cork Harbour Dinghy fleet had transferred to Rankins to take part in the event. It was very uplifting to see the number of children and young people crewing the Rankins and enjoying the uniqueness of the Sunday races to and from Spike Island.
After the five race series the top four placings were:-
- 1st - Dan O’Connell with his son Paul crewing on Saturday and his daughter Millie crewing on Sunday in R61
- 2nd - Tom Dwyer with his nephew Harry Coole crewing in R29
- 3rd - John Horgan with his grandson Theo Carney crewing In TR2
- 4th - Fiona O’Connell with Meadow Hanley crewing on Saturday and her niece Grace O’ Connell crewing on Sunday in R21.
Congratulations to all.
A huge vote of thanks to Owen O’Connell and Eithne Twomey for the tremendous amount of work they did to make this such a successful weekend; to Peter Crowley and his family - it wouldn’t have happened without you - a heart felt thank you. Also to RCYC who made the Rankin Class and Crews so welcome over the weekend.
