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Final Call For ICRA National Championships: Reduced Entry Fee Discount Closes on Friday

8th May 2017
Dave Cullen's Checkmate from Howth Yacht Club will defend its Class Two ICRA Crown at Royal Cork next month. Dave Cullen's Checkmate from Howth Yacht Club will defend its Class Two ICRA Crown at Royal Cork next month. Credit: Afloat.ie

The ICRA Cruiser National Championships reduced entry fee registration of €150.00 will end this Friday 12th May, just a month before the event sets sail at Royal Cork Yacht Club from 9th – 11th June. The final closing date for entry is the 26th May. Enter online here.

As of today, ICRA estimates over sixty percent of the expected boats have entered the championships.  'Thanks to all the boats that have entered so far as this assists greatly with the planning of the event', ICRA Commodore Simon McGibney told Afloat.ie

The J24 Association of Ireland will be hosting their Southern Championships during the event and the Quarter tonner will in addition to be racing in division but also will be racing for the Quarter Ton Cup.

Published in ICRA

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The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)