SAILING:WITH JUST three races remaining in the series, the Four Star Pizza Youth Sailing World Championships begin their penultimate day on Dublin Bay this afternoon with all to play for.

A light wind forecast for today could add to the challenges while the outlook for tomorrow’s single race finale is as poor.

Both Ireland’s single-handed crews had strong results yesterday in the Laser Radial Boys and Girls fleets respectively.

Blessington’s Finn Lynch placed third in the opening race of the day, improving on Saturday’s fourth and retaining eighth overall. However, he was amongst a clutch of boats penalised for early starting yesterday and was disqualified from the second race.

This meant he counted a 23rd place from earlier in the week that had been discarded and the penalty probably cost him several places closer to the podium.

Mitchell Kiss of the US, leader of the 58-strong fleet, also fell foul of the same ‘Black Flag’ rule yesterday though he still enjoys an 11-point lead over Italy’s Marco Zani in second place.

In the Girls class, Quoile’s Sophie Murphy had a 13th place in the first race followed by a third in the much breezier second race, which moves the Strangford sailor from 17th to 14th overall.

Sweden’s Julia Carlsson won the last race to extend her overall lead to a comfortable 16 points.

Yesterday’s second race was marked by a sudden squall that saw winds rapidly increase from nine to more than 20 knots as visibility dropped in driving rain. The race committee on the 29er Skiff course went to shift the windward mark to adjust the course for a new wind direction but as the front cleared the new mark was not laid as the fleet were sailing up the leg to an absent mark.

The race was abandoned which might have been disappointing for Seán and Tadgh Donnelly as they had survived the squall while many others were capsized around them. The Dún Laoghaire pair were amongst the leaders and certainly heading for their best result of the week.

However, in the race that followed, the brothers delivered a creditable sixth place that did turn out to be their best performance of the week that leaves them in 11th place overnight.