[1][2] During the 19th and early 20th century racing was organised for 18'-0" long open centre board boats with one sail on the Shannon lakes.
different lakeside and riverside builders adapted their traditional rowing boats to meet an owners preferences.
(Ref) talk by Vincent Delany at LRYC February 2020 (/ref) All of this results in a dynamic dinghy.
142, 151 The "SOD" or "Shannon" as the class is often called[4] requires three people to race and this produces a very sociable form of sailing.
Sailing SODs has always attracted families, and generations in many cases have been involved in campaigning the same boat down through the years.
Indeed, many of the same family names that attended that first meeting in 1920 still feature in SOD racing today.
There is also a very healthy influx of younger sailors joining the fleet to compete against older generations.
Sailing has flourished on the River Shannon, and especially on Loughs Allen, Key, Ree and Derg, for hundreds of years.
One Design classes were created in the first quarter of the 20th century to provide evenly matched racing without handicaps.
In 2010 the second episode BBC television series Three Men Go to Ireland featured the three men, Dara Ó Briain, Griff Rhys Jones and Rory McGrath, racing SODs adjacent to the Lough Derg Yacht Club the previous October.