The HYC team lead by Ross McDonald with crew Aoife McDonald, Dylan Gannon and Cuan Whelan emerged victorious at the Royal Yacht Squadron Commodore’s Invitational this week. Fourteen teams from around Britain and Ireland were competing from Cowes in the waters of the Solent. Racing was held in standardised J70’s with all the boats provided by the RYS which were equalised by the organising team to ensure the tightest of one-design racing.

After flying in and registering on Monday the crew got aquatinted with the J70 for an open practice session in the afternoon. Monday morning was quite light but by the time we got on the water we were greeted with some beautiful Solent conditions of sunshine and 14-17 knots of breeze. A few hours of practice and honing some manoeuvres were mixed with some high speeds planning past Cowes harbour entrance. We headed back to the dock happy with the feel we had for the boat and a reasonable amount of confidence in our manoeuvres. Each of the well know clubs had sent strong teams that were peppered with some J70 regulars so we had to be content with a condensed practice leading into this competitive regatta.

At Monday evenings briefing and welcome drinks we found out that some of what we were doing was against the J70 class rules. So a little rejig of how we sailed was needed….

There was a strong breeze forecast for Tuesday but we were optimistic we might get some races in the late afternoon when the forecast was to moderate. Unfortunately at the breakfast briefing the OA made the decision to cancel racing for the day. After some chit chat with the other teams and a trip back to the air bnb we decided to head for a local hotel pool, that kept us entertained for a few hours.

The RYS team were confident of getting eight races in and brought the start forward to 09:25 for Wednesday. A fresh 16+ knots greeted us on the racecourse on the Bramble bank and the RC wasted no time in getting races under the belt. We were eased into it with no spinnakers allowed for race 1 but they let the shackles off even as the breeze was building and races 2&3 were with spinnakers before they restricted us again in race 4. We came out of the blocks fast with a race win followed by three 2nd places.

With the breeze and sea state building the racecourse was moved to the more sheltered Osbourne Bay. Tucked in close to the land brought a different challenge with flat water but streaks of pressure and shifty breeze, and still plenty of tide! Spinnakers were permitted in race 5 but with plenty of wipeouts in the strong, shifty gusts that was the last time they were flown. Dominant race wins in race 5&6 sealed the victory for us with two races to spare.

With foul tide on the start and a pin bias we got squeezed out at the start at race five so we had to dig ourselves back into the top five by the finish.

The final race was a passage race back to Cowes finishing at the RYS with every boat receiving a cannon blast as they crossed the finish line to cap off a fantastic regatta.

While we don’t get to take the trophy back to HYC we finished content that Howth Yacht Club will be proudly listed on the honours wall in the Platform room in the Squadron Castle amongst the other historic RYS trophy winners.

The Royal Yacht Squadron extended the warmest welcome to all the competitors. Each evening at the regatta supper in the castle everyone was seated at random rather than with your crew, so there was plenty of mingling with the other teams. On the second evening Aoife’s randomly selected seat was between the Commodore and the Vice Commodore where they spent the evening laughing and getting to know each other!

Thanks to HYC for their support and nomination for this regatta, it’ll be fun trying to defend the title in 2026.

Ross, Aoife, Dylan & Cuan.

Results:

https://halsail-1e484.kxcdn.com/Result/Overall/89675

Gallery:

https://www.rys.org.uk/the-rys/gallery/commodores-invitational-2025