As Championship Chairman Ian Simington of the Royal St. George Yacht Club bangs the drum for last entries for a burgeoning 2019 ICRA Nationals fleet on Dublin Bay, the cruiser racer body is preparing to make good on a promise made last year on class splits.
The ICRA National Championships will be staged from 7th – 9th June.
Last November an engaged ICRA conference heard that in order to give sailors more confidence in terms of who they will be racing against when entering an event, the association was to adopt a range of classes based on the design of cruiser/racer commonly sailed and narrow rating bands.
Divisions, the conference was told, will be formed for an event by combining these classes. They pledged ICRA would ensure all like type designs were in the same class.
In addition to the IRC rating, ICRA is also introducing a trial ECHO Handicap System for the championships on the capitals waters.
Simington says the championship fleet is 'building nicely' but the ICRA provisional entry list here is currently updated to March 30 only. With another fortnight for late entries, any final assessment of class breaks is still too early to call. Typically, class breaks won't be published by organisers until approximately a week before the event, as was the case in 2018 before the ill-fated Galway Bay event.
Working with the information to hand, here is the situation facing the ICRA rating committee:
- Class Zero if the break is at 1.050 it will just have four boats and two of them (Rockabill VI and Tsunami) will be just over that. If they break Class 0 at 1.030—then class 0 goes to 9 boats.
- Class One if they make the break at 1.000, it will have at least 17 boats, but maybe up to 22 if the class break for Zero is at 1.050
- Class Two if the breaks are .999 to .921, this class that typically includes half tonners, will have 21 in that class
- Class Three/Four4 if they break it at 920, this division will have about 29 boats.
Update May 12: Read ICRA's response here
