#rnli – Last Saturday, over sixty young sailors from the Irish National Sailing School (INSS) headed out on quite a miserable Saturday to participate in the annual Irish National Sailing School's Sail-A-Thon. Now in its sixth year of existence, the idea of the sail-a-thon is to give younger sailors the opportunity to raise vital funds for a selected charity that is relevant to them. In previous years, these sailors have raised fund for Our Lady's Children Hospital in Crumlin but this year and last year, they have chosen to raise funds for the RNLI in conjunction with their Mayday campaign.
The young sailors spent the previous month collecting sponsorship monies for them to partake in our non-stop Sail-A-Thon which saw young sailors from as young as 6 battle conditions in which most DBSC racing was cancelled for up to 6 hours non-stop sailing. With winds in excess of 32 kts and driving rain, our young sailors to the seas in our fleet of Squib dayboats with the slightly older sailors utilising our diverse fleet of Laser Picos, Hartley training boats and other double handed dinghies.
Sailors fulfilled their sponsorship duties and returned ashore for a presentation with local Dun Laoghaire RNLI crew-members, Jenny and Johnny of the RNLI coming over to receive the funds raised and also to educate our younger sailors about the importance of the RNLI and where their funds would be used.
At the final count, INSS announced the sailors raised €1,936 euros.