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Displaying items by tag: Peadar O'Suilleabhain

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 30th Student Yachting World Cup (SYWoC), and for the Irish Team, it was the first opportunity for some of them to check out La Rochelle. This year's Team Ireland consists of a joint effort between UL, LIT and UCC.

The team consists of Skipper Robert O'Leary(UCC), Cian Gallagher (UL), John Blake (UL), Dee O'Rourke (LIT), Lisa Dann (UCC), Caitlin Cuppage (UCC), Shane Newman (UL), Peadar O'Suilleabhain (UL), Jamie Donegan (UCC). The team will race with 6 or 7 up depending on the weather for the week, currently the forecast is looking quite light. Not what was expected for this time of year in La Rochelle.
After an early start at 7am this morning, the team travelled to the Societé de Regatis Rochelouies, the club which hosted the very first SYWoC in 1979. And which is SYWoC's base for the week.
A practice race was scheduled for 2pm, after a general briefing at 1pm. However, with wind gusting over 30kts, the race organisers decided that it was not worth risking the fleet with 6 days of racing ahead. The teams will be given an hour prior to racing tomorrow to put the final preparations on their 2010 SYWoC campaigns.
Team Ireland will hope to keep the title of a force to be reckoned with, after all the past 4 SYWoC campaigns for Ireland have had results of a 1st (Trinity - 2006), 2nd (CIT - 2007), 1st (CIT - 2008), 4th (CIT - 2009).

Published in Youth Sailing

Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.