Sutton Dinghy club were delighted to be able to accept the invitation to take part in the inaugural Elmo Trophy, an inter-club team racing event held last week end in the Royal St George YC in memory of the late Graham Elmes. Graham Elmes Kanoodle FrostbitesElmo Trophy Team Sep15

Our interest was twofold. Firstly, our Club has been involved in team racing since its earliest inception back in 1944 when Sutton Dinghy Club and the CHSC (now RCYC) held the first TR event in Ireland. This event continues today in what is known as the Book Trophy or the Sutton Book (if your from Cork). The Club also competed in Dublin Bay team racing as well as being a regular attendee at the Wilson Trophy in West Kirby, UK down the years.

More importantly was our Clubs relationship with Graham Elmes. In his short time as a member of our GP14 fleet Graham became a huge favourite with many of our juniors due to his willingness to spend time with them tuning their Mirrors. In the last year or so we have seen many of those juniors progress to GP14. Graham was big loss to Sutton and Irish sailing.Ready for Launch Elmo Trophy

Despite a couple of late cry-offs the Sutton Dinghy Club team of Darragh Kelly, Peter Boyle, Oscar Langan with honorary SDC members Conor Little & Henry Higgins and led by Conor Twohig took to the water about 11am on Saturday morning.

Ironically one of our early engagements was against West Kirby home of the famous Wilson Trophy. Despite little team racing experience the guys more than acquitted themselves finishing 5th in first round robin series winning 3 of their first 7 races. DKelly at Elmo Trophy Sep15

Racing continued on Sunday with Sutton finishing 6th with West Kirby the eventual winners.

A great event and one our young sailors enjoyed immensely.

A big thank you to the family of Graham Elmes and to John Sheehy and the team in the Royal St George YC for organizing such a great event. Thank you also to our young coach Dan Gill who managed to get an on the water coaching session with the team before the weekend. We hope this helps kick-start an interest in team racing going forward.

Also a big thank you to Barry Twohig, Sean Langan, Andy Johnston and Jim Lambkin for their time on Saturday and Sunday. We are hopeful that the event becomes a regular on the calendar and that Sutton Dinghy Club will be in attendance next year.

See Afloat event report (John Sheehy).

[whohit]-2015 Elmo Trophy-[/whohit]