BY CIARAN TIERNEY

There is no sign of the balmy Summer sunshine which saw the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) stopover capture the hearts and minds of the people of the city three years ago as Galway prepares for the grand finale during a nine day party which starts tomorrow.

Glorious weather and the sheer warmth of the welcome at Galway Harbour in 2009, when 10,000 people turned out at 3am to welcome the competing boats, ensured that the organisers of world sailing’s biggest race had no qualms about bringing it back to such a small city.

The forecast for the next five days is for changeable, showery conditions as the competing crews are set to get more of a flavour of a “real Irish Summer” than the spectacular Saharan sunshine which transformed the event – attracting 650,000 visitors – three years ago.

“Especially given how changeable it has been over recent days, no forecaster would dare to risk predicting past the next five days,” a spokesman for Met Éireann told the Galway City Tribune yesterday. “It sounds a cliché, but we are in for a mixture of sunshine and scattered showers.”

With over 270 events set to take place on land, the scale of the event is unrecognisable from the 2009 stopover and more ‘weather-proofed’ thanks to the spectacular 100,000 square metre Global Village in South Park.

Light winds are forecast for Monday and Tuesday, which means that the competing boats should complete the relatively short journey from Lorient in France by Tuesday evening.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.