The ICRA Cruiser-Racer National Championships at Howth Yacht Club, which incorporates the J24 National Championships, is gearing up to be a strong event, with over 70 boats expected to participate.

Organisers have now revealed the class bands for the three-day Monday.com sponsored championships, which are set to take place on Friday (8th September). The boats will be divided into four classes based on their size and other factors. 

Class 0 will include boats with ratings between 1.036 and 1.155, while Class 1 will be for boats with ratings between 0.986 and 1.035. Class 2 will feature boats with ratings between 0.936 and 0.985, and Class 3 will be for boats with ratings between 0.876 and 0.936. 

Brendan Foley's First class 8, 'Allig8r' from the Royal St. George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire will compete at the 2023 ICRA Nationals at Howth Photo: Afloat

Apart from these four classes, there will also be a special Non-spinnaker Class 4 & 5, which will be combined into a single start with separate results.

The end-of-season event brings the curtain down on an exciting season, and the organisers are looking forward to welcoming all the participants and spectators to the championship that looks set to benefit from the Indian Summer conditions.

The championships will be the main “on water” feature of the Howth Maritime and Seafood Festival, which takes place over the weekend of the 8th and 10th of September.

ICRA National Championships 2023 Class Bands

• Class 0: 1.036 to 1.155
• Class 1: 0.986 to 1.035
• Class 2: 0.936 to 0.985
• Class 3: 0.876 to 0.936

The ICRA National championships will be the main “on water” feature of the Howth Maritime and Seafood Festival, which takes place over the weekend of the 8th and 10th of September.

The ICRA Commodore, David Cullen, has reported 52 entries for the Monday.com ICRA National Championships incorporating the J24 National Championships two weeks from now.

Following a challenging racing year of light winds in May and June and wet and windy weather in July and August, the Executive Committee have decided to extend the entry deadline until the 1st of September. So please shake the cobwebs off that cruiser of yours and enter her for this well-organised event.

The organising Committee in Howth Yacht Club is hopeful that the rain will run out and an Indian Summer will provide ideal racing conditions off Howth for the Championships from the 8th- 10th September.

Howth Yacht Club have arranged camping and campervan facilities at Deer Park nearby in order to offer accommodation options for those travelling from around the country.

Entry can be made on this link for the monday.com ICRA National Championships 2023, Incorporating the J24 National Championships. 

This is an open event, and ICRA welcomes all sailors.

Please see the schedule for racing below:

ICRA 2023 National Championships Schedule 2023

Host club yachts will be among the expected top performers for the ICRA National Championships at Howth Yacht Club this September.

Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Commodore David Cullen is reporting solid entries for the Monday.com ICRA National Championships incorporating J24 National Championships with six weeks to go.

ICRA and Howth Yacht Club are encouraged to see entry numbers at 40 boats with six weeks left before the event.

Even more encouraging is to see several notable visitor boats attending, including the highly fancied J122 Jelly Baby and QuarterTonner Anchor Challenge from Cork, together with Hijacker and the A35 Final Call II from Northern Ireland.

Dave Cullen and Nigel Bigg's First 50, Checkmate XX from the host club Photo: Michael Chester

Defending 2022 ICRA Overall National Champion, John Maybury's successful "Joker II" is also entered, having recently had massive success in Kinsale during the Sovereign's Cup, whilst several local hot shots, including Snapshot, Dux, Checkmate XX and Storm are ready to fend off all visitors whilst providing a warm welcome at Howth Yacht Club.

Mike and Ritchie Evans's J99 Snaphot will be on home waters for the ICRA Nationals at Howth Photo: Bob Bateman

The J24 fleet will provide a strong presence with up to 25 boats expected, including several Under 25-year-olds; ICRA partly funded K25 boats.

"Howth Yacht Club is hopeful that the rain will run out, and an Indian Summer has been ordered for 8th -10th September, John Leech of ICRA told Afloat.

Howth Yacht Club have arranged camping and campervan facilities at Deerpark nearby to offer accommodation options for those travelling from around the country.

The Howth Harbour Master has been accommodating to the fleet offering temporary berthing in the Fishery Harbour and delivering safe and comfortable facilities to all competitors during the spring tides over the weekend.

Entry can be made on this link for the monday.com ICRA National Championships 2023 incorporating the J24 National Championships.

Thanks to its new sponsor, the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) has opened entry for September's 2023 Irish National Championships with a unique app (link for download below).

As regular Afloat readers will know, the championships were boosted last week by the announcement of monday.com as the title sponsor for the three-day event at Howth Yacht Club from 8th-10th September. 

Organisers expect upwards of 100 boats and more than 1,000 competitors to compete in five classes between Ireland's Eye and Lambay Island off the Fingal coast of North County Dublin.

To mark their sponsorship, monday.com has created a unique application to assist boat owners and crews in managing their demanding schedules using the scheduling and integration features offered by the cloud-based system.

The ICRA National Championships at Howth will also incorporate the J24 National Championships

Crew availability, boat maintenance and event planning are all contained within the standard template that will be free for users to download.

In addition to the cruiser-racer classes, the three-day series will also incorporate the J24 National Championships, with upwards of 30 crews expected from all corners of Ireland.

"As we put the spectre of the Covid pandemic well behind us, we're making sure that we have plenty of time to stage a super event both afloat and ashore that Howth is well-known for," commented Jill Sommerville, chairperson of the HYC organising committee. "

Welcoming the development of the monday.com application, ICRA Commodore David Cullen said: "Managing a team can be complex and time-consuming, so anything that helps streamline the process is a great addition for a boat of any size."

Online entry for the event is available now - click here

Crew Management application - click here

Most sailors would have seen themselves as Friday Fun-Folk and Monday Moaners until yesterday (Thursday) evening, when Howth Yacht Club Commodore Neil Murphy announced that the club's big one for 2023, the staging of the ICRA Nationals from September 8th to 10th, would be sponsored by the major international tech-force monday.com with its main Irish face, Providence.

It would almost be easier to list the very few services that this state-of-the-art international business development group doesn't provide. But for sailors it's sufficient to say that if you have problems in keeping tabs on your essential racing crew panel, then monday.com will have a system which makes it all much more straightforward and efficient. And as any experienced and successful owner will attest, if you've a system that monitors a race-winning crew panel in an easy and accessible way, then its transference in different forms to business development at any size and level can be taken as a given, as monday.com can give a lot.

But then, so too can ICRA, as their lead representative Richard Colwell of the successful J/109 Outrajeous reminded us. The hard-fought ICRA Nats may be when they go most public, but their season-long monitoring of many events to adjudicate the ICRA Boat of the Year (the current one is the Evans brothers of Howth's J/99 Snapshot) is one of the key analytics of Irish sailing, while their U25 programme has become an international pace-setter.

The championship organisation is being chaired by Jill Sommervile, and though September may now seem a long way distant, she made it very clear that early entrants will get a generous discount, providing a saving which can be usefully re-used when party time comes in September, and Monday is everyone's favourite day of the week.

Following last week's ICRA announcement that the 2024 Cruiser Nationals will return to the Royal Irish Yacht Club in September, ICRA Commodore Dave Cullen has confirmed the Dun Laoghaire dates as 6th-8th September. 

As Afloat previously reported, the RIYC hosts the ICRA's for the third time in 2024.

Cullen told Afloat, "the Royal Irish will put together a very attractive and professionally run event". 

The event will mark the event's 20th anniversary, and the sixth time the cruiser-racer championships will have sailed on the Dublin Bay race track.

Royal Irish previously hosted the ICRAs, one of the key fixtures of the Irish sailing season, in 2006 and 2014, with both events featuring a 100-boat-plus fleet.

2025

Cullen added that ICRA was now inviting expressions of interest from clubs wishing to host the ICRA Nationals in 2025 and asks any interested party to register interest to [email protected] before May 1st.

The Irish Cruiser Racer National Championships return to the Royal Irish Yacht Club for the third time in 2024, the ICRA conference heard on Saturday. 

The event will mark the event's 20th anniversary, and the sixth time the championships will have sailed on the Dublin Bay race track.

Royal Irish previously hosted the ICRAs, one of the key fixtures of the Irish sailing season, in 2006 and 2014, with both events featuring a 100-boat-plus fleet.

Like this year's edition scheduled for Howth, 2024's event will run in the first week of September.

The Royal Irish Yacht Club is situated in a central location in Dun Laoghaire Harbour with excellent access, and visiting sailors can be sure of a special welcome. 

The clubhouse is located in the prime middle ground of the harbour in front of the town marina, and it is Dun Laoghaire's oldest yacht club. 

Fenit for 2025?

ICRA Commodore Dave Cullen also announced at Saturday's conference that the association is seeking applications for its 21st event in 2025.

Cullen confirmed at least one application had been received; Tralee Bay Sailing Club in County Kerry has sought the event for its Fenit Bay race track, a venue that previously hosted in 2009 and 2013.

Co-skippers Mike & Richie Evans of ICRA Boat of the Year, the J/99 Snapshot, had a relaxed and celebratory winding-down with crew, friends, family, and fellow Howth YC members when they returned to base from the ICRA AGM & Annual Conference in the Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire at the weekend. They'd been under the additional pressure of making the key presentation at the Dun Laoghaire gathering, but by the time they and the Trophy had made it safely back to the peninsula, it was a matter of just going with the flow of comradely festivity.

Nevertheless, there was talk of Snapshot's coming season, with the Scottish Series in late May very much in the reckoning, while the Welsh IRC Championship in Pwllheli in mid-May needs to be considered, and they are of course, defending champions at the biennial Sovereign's Cup in Kinsale at the end of June.

But more immediately on the agenda is this Saturday's (March 11th) annual dinghy race round Ireland's Eye, in which several Snapshotters are involved, with Mike Evans himself campaigning his RS800 and hoping for a good head-to-head with three visiting International 14s and other exotics.

The Irish Cruiser Racer Association's (ICRA) new committee for 2023 was elected at Saturday's national conference agm in Dun Laoghaire.

Commodore Dave Cullen announced to the hybrid meeting – online and in attendance at the Royal St George Yacht Club – that there were two new Dublin additions for the coming season. 

Howth skipper Mike Evans, the current ICRA boat of the year skipper, joins as a committee member with Dun Laoghaire sailor Alice Shanahan of the National Yacht Club.

The balance of the 12-person committee under Cullen, who starts his second year in office, is Secretary Denis Byrne, Treasurer, John Leech Treasurer, Technical Delegate Ric Morris, Brian Raftery, ISORA Rep Peter Ryan, IRC Liaison Mark Mills, Liam Lynch, SCORA Rep Daragh Connelly and Youth Pathways liaison Saoirse Reynolds.

The 2023 ICRA conference and agm held at the Royal St. George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire on Dublin Bay

In a packed morning conference schedule, the Commodore welcomed representatives from June's Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race and Sovereign's Cup at Kinsale, July's Dun Laoghaire Regatta, ISORA, SCORA and WIORA, along with Howth's staging of the ICRA Nationals in September. As Afloat reported earlier, each gave updates on their regatta and race plans this summer.

The 2023 meeting marked the 20th edition of the conference. As regular Afloat readers will know, an exploratory ICRA meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel was held in Waterford in 2022, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

Read also: 

ICRA Hears of Robotic Buoys as Dun Laoghaire Regatta Seeks 400-Boats for Ireland's Biggest Sailing Event

20 Entries In For June's Dun Laoghaire Dingle Race, ICRA Conference Told

ISORA's Ryan Emphasises Coastal Racing at ICRA Conference

Irish Cruiser-Racers Get Snapshot Of Success As Highlight Of Today’s ICRA Conference in Dun Laoghaire

ICRA Boat of the Year winning skipper Mike Evans of Howth Yacht Club headlines this Saturday's National Conference at the Royal St. George Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin.

Evans — co-owner of the successful J99 Snapshot, ICRA Boat of the Year for 2022 — will outline boat and sails selection, crew preparation, and effective planning for a successful season and share some of his winning formulae.

As previously reported, as well as the keynote speakers, there will be updates on the major events planned for the year and the AGM, including the sailors’ forum — where ICRA members can discuss and debate the big issues in the sport — and updates on ICRA activities.

The national cruiser-racer association has published its agenda for Saturday's meeting (see below) 

The conference will start at 10:00 am, followed by the AGM, and close at 13:00 pm.

Cruiser-racing on Duboin Bay - ICRA members can discuss and debate the big issues in the sport at this Saturday's national conference in Dun Laoghaire Photo: Afloat

The full agenda for this year's conference and AGM is as follows:

ICRA Conference Agenda 2023

• Welcome & Update, by Commodore
• Events Update 2023, club representatives
• Irish Sailing CEO, Tim Bourke, Observations from Irish Sailing
• Break
• ICRA BOTY winner, Mike Evans, Snapshot review & tips for success
• Sailors Forum

ICRA AGM Agenda 2023

• Formal Opening
• Financial Update
• Updates from Executive Committee Members
• Notification of Committee Members Stepping Down
• Review of Executive Committee Nominations
• Executive Committee Elections
• Closeout

If you haven't already, please register to get the zoom link or attend the conference in person.