Harvest Festive Sailing & Supper at Lough Derg Yacht Club

Around the world people celebrate the bounty of the harvest and it is not different here in Tipperary. Lough Derg Yacht Club (LDYC) in Dromineer has had its own Harvest Festival, with boat racing for the traditional Shannon One Design (SOD), a hand-crafted wooden boat raced on Lough Derg and Lough Rea, for over 100 years, it has one big white sail and three crew members. The other boat sailed over the weekend was the Squib class, a small yacht with three sails, one distinctive red sail and two crew.

The Harvest regatta was hosted by the Moloney family with twelve entries for SODS and eleven Squibs. Food harvested from gardens and cooked with care was brough for the supper.

On the first day, the weather starts with a bright and cheerful morning. The sun rises in the clear blue sky, casting a warm and inviting glow over everything. Despite the sun's warmth, a strong breeze with a touch of briskness sweeps in providing great racing conditions, and five races completed. On the second day, the weather takes a different turn, there was no wind, and the air calm and still, preventing competitive racing. The Harvest Trophy for SOD’s was won by Frank Guy and crew Natalie Guy and Noreen Sheridan in SOD 142 and the Squibs class was won by David McFarland & Tadg Murphy in the No 127 -Misfire

This is not the end of the season in LDYC, as the club is hosting the open Freshwater Keelboat Championships on October 14-15th. The keel is the long structure at the bottom of the boat. Four classes of keelboats will compete including, Squib, Dragons, SB20’s and Flying 15’s. Come down to Dromineer and see the action and find out more about sailing on the lake at LDYC.ie.

The final LDYC regatta, the Wolf regatta hosted by the Gleeson family in memory of Donal Gleeson (1951-2009) and named after his SOD will be held in Terryglass on the Halloween weekend. So sailing is not over for the LDYC sailors.