Brown and Murphy take top ISA awards

Female sailors claimed the top prizes at the Irish Sailing Association’s annual awards ceremony in Dun Laoghaire on Saturday night.

Tralee Bay Sailing Club’s Sophie Brown won Youth Sailor of the Year for her 13th place overall at the Optimist Youth Worlds in New Zealand at Christmas where she also won silver in the girls’ event.

London 2012 Olympic prospect Annalise Murphy won the Sailing Achievement of the Year award for her performance in the Laser Radial class last year where she won bronze at the Weymouth Olympic venue and maintained top ten results in all major events.

Other recipients included Galway’s Rusheen Bay Windsurfing centre as the training centre of the year, taking over from the University of Limerick facility on Lough Derg who won last year’s award.

Meanwhile, in the South Pacific Ocean French entry Groupama 4 continued to lead in the Volvo Ocean Race after crossing the region’s Doldrums zone over the weekend. Skipper Franck Cammas and his crew that includes Ireland’s Damian Foxall from Derrynane held a 90-mile lead yesterday as the six boat fleet began to converge after splitting east and west of the Solomon Island.

Cammas has held the dominant eastern side of the course while overall race leader Iker Martinez on Spanish entry Telefonica was leading the charge from the west. The race was about 1,000 miles East of Cairns last night and still has almost 1,400 miles remaining in this fourth leg to New Zealand where the first boats are expected to reach Auckland next weekend.