Finbarr O’Regan and the crew of the J/109 Artful DodJer came away from Calves Week 2026 with both the IRC One and ORC One titles, sailing for Kinsale Yacht Club in what turned out to be one of the closest divisions of the regatta.
Hosted by Schull Harbour Sailing Club on Roaringwater Bay in West Cork, the four day championship ran from Tuesday 4 to Friday 7 August and drew the largest fleet the event has seen since Schull’s Centenary Regatta, with more than 80 boats and around 600 sailors converging on the village. Racing was scored three ways under IRC, ECHO and ORC, which meant three separate championships to chase and very little room for a bad leg.
Class One was as tight as any of them. The divisions were stacked with six J/109s, and a mix of other strong competitors, including a Sun Fast 3300 and a Hanse 400, and the racing reflected it. Most races ran somewhere between two and four hours, and the fleet regularly came home inside a thirty minute spread from first boat to last on elapsed time. Corrected time margins were measured in seconds.
Wednesday’s Fastnet Rock Race set the tone. A fresh 15 to 20 knot northwesterly turned the course into a tight reach out to the lighthouse and another tight reach home, with few crews finding an angle to set a kite. Artful DodJer finished 37 seconds off Pat Kelly’s Storm on IRC corrected time, with Barry Cunningham’s Chimaera a further three seconds back. Three boats, forty seconds, after a couple of hours of racing.
The final day brought light winds and a genuine showdown. Under IRC, Artful DodJer held on to take the class by a single point from Chimaera, with Storm third, completing an all J/109 podium. The ORC title was even tighter. Artful DodJer and Chimaera finished level on four points after four races, and the championship went to Artful DodJer on countback thanks to a win in the last race of the week. Tony O’Brien’s Tighey Boy from Schull Harbour Sailing Club took third.
Congratulations to Finbarr and the whole crew. Winning one of those titles in that fleet would have been an achievement. Taking both, with the ORC decided on a final race countback, says everything about how consistently they sailed the boat all week.
There was more to celebrate elsewhere in the fleet. In ECHO Zero, the Burke, Lemass and Rigley team took the championship aboard their First 40 Prima Forte, representing the Royal Irish Yacht Club. Whitesail One delivered a double, with Ronan Twomey’s First 40.7 Rosmarina from the Royal Cork Yacht Club claiming the ORC title and Aidan Heffernan’s Dehler 36 Indulgence taking the IRC honours on home water for Schull Harbour Sailing Club. Four very different boats across four very different corners of the regatta, all heading home with silverware.
There were plenty of UK Sailmakers customers on the water across the classes at Schull, and it is always a pleasure to see so many familiar faces out enjoying a regatta like this one. Congrats to Barry Hayes and the team at UK Sailmakers Ireland, who look after so many of the boats racing on this coast and who keep turning out sails that perform at the front of these fleets.There was no shortage of X-Drive® and Titanium upwind inventory in the mix, along with plenty of Matrix® spinnakers filling in on the runs.
Calves Week has a well earned reputation for combining serious racing with a proper welcome ashore, and by all accounts the 2026 edition lived up to it. More than a few regulars were calling it the best yet. Full results across IRC, ECHO and ORC are available through Schull Harbour Sailing Club here.
