It would be quite a challenge to explain to a complete non-sailor how sailing in Ireland functions and is organised, both on and off the water. There are as many un-written rules and ways of doing things as there are standard procedures.

Irish Cruiser Racer Association (ICRA) Commodore Denis Byrne Photo: Bob Bateman

Thus overall co-ordination requires high-level yet often invisible diplomacy. This morning's conference of the Irish Cruiser-Racer Association at the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire will see Commodore Denis Byrne of Cork, and his members from many centres, review the workings, results and plans of an organisation that strives to answer to the needs of cruiser-racer owners and crews from all over Ireland, an organisation whose executive members know that they need to go with the flow and focused numbers of boats and sailors, without making a fuss about it.

The ever-young 47-year-old Farr Half Tonner Swuzzlebubble (James Dwyer, Royal Cork) had a championship-winning year of it in 2024. Photo: Robert Bateman

WHERE THE BOATS ARE

In other words, their annual championship is inevitably held at one end or the other of the Cork-Dublin axis, for that's where the boats are. And if there's a club on that axis with a long-standing annual or biennial regatta event, ways have been devised of fitting the ICRA Nats within that regatta, with this year's Sovereigns at Kinsale from June 25th to 28th incorporating the ICRA Nats 2025.

Beyond that, ICRA organises a season-long collation of results from cruiser-racer events of special significance, and from it they derive a "Boat of the Year". Originally it was totally based on IRC Handicap results, but for 2024 they added an additional ECHO Handicaps alternative top boat award.

Power to the people…..The hefty First 50 Checkmate XX (Dave Cullen & Nigel Biggs) makes a point of introducing young sailors to cruiser-racing, while Nigel Biggs is also ICRA's Ratings Secretary. Photo: Annraoi Blaney

INTERESTING VARIETY

Thus for 2024 they produced an interesting variety of craft at the head of the overall leaderboards, with James Dwyer's classic Half Tonner Swuzzlebubble of 1976-vintage from Crosshaven winning IRC 2024 by just one point from RCYC clubmates the Murphy family, racing the Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo, while ECHO 2024 was taken by Fergal Noonan and Robert Chambers from Howth with the Corby 25 Impetuous.

With the ICRA Nats staged as a standalone event in Dublin Bay by the Royal Irish YC during their hectic Cresta Run of super-major late season events, the overall winner (for the second year in a row) was Johnny & Susie Murphy's J/109 Outrajeous from Howth which - when seen in the ICRA context – makes for an healthily varied trio of champions with Swuzzlebubble, Impetuous, and Outrajeous.

OLD SALTS UNDERSTAND IT ALL

All this will of course will be totally familiar – ancient history in fact – to any self-respecting boat-nut. But we're trying to stand back and get a sense of how the Irish sailing scene's annual programme must look like to an outsider. And when we consider that 2024 included the biennial SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race from Wicklow in late June and the K2Q (Dublin Bay to Cork Harbour) in early July, we'll naturally assume that the Irish Cruiser-Racer Association has been in being for a very long time.

After all, the rules of yacht racing as now used worldwide were first outlined by the Royal Alfred YC in Dublin Bay in 1870. The concept of One Design Classes was first codified by Ben Middleton of the Dublin Bay Water Wags in 1886-87. And way back before that, the first recognisably modern offshore race, the Kingstown to Queenstown, was sailed in 1860.

The 1850s Royal Cork YC clubhouse in Cobh was finish point for the first K2Q of 1860. It is now the Sirius Arts Centre, with the RCYC based in Crosshaven

It was the brainchild of the venerable Admiral of the Royal Cork YC, T G French, and is now honoured 165 years later in stagings of the K2Q. But the fact of its antiquity, the long years of sailing signposts and boat class concepts, and the smoothly co-ordinated yet complex annual programme, might make you assume that when ICRA was founded, they soon had Noah on at them to get a better racing rating for his Ark.

Not a bit of it. ICRA is only 23 years old. It was first outlined in 2002 at a very informal meeting in the Granville Hotel in Waterford as neutral ground for founders Denis Kiely of Kinsale, Jim Donegan of Royal Cork, and Fintan Cairns of Dublin Bay.

SECOND-TIER PARTICIPANTS?

They shared a concern that Ireland's growing number of cruiser-racer sailors, despite having reached the stage that they provided most of the boats and the vast majority of the sailors and après-sailors at Ireland's regattas, were still being treated as second-tier participants by committees and race officers, people of the entrenched establishment whose mind-set continued to be dominated by the One-Design ideal.

Fintan Cairns, a former Commodore of Dublin Bay SC, was one of the trio that brought ICRA into being

The assessment of the three founders was bang on target. New concepts in sailing events were spreading with all the discipline of Japanese knotweed. All-powerful and ambitious clubs wanted to shoulder their way into position of event-staging dominance. And somewhere at the bottom of the pyramid, the sailors – and particularly the cruiser-racer crews - sometimes seemed to get little consideration and even less consultation – they could take it or leave it as the powers-that-be saw fit.

CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION FOR SAILORS

Thus the core idea behind the new ICRA was that it began as a sort of Consumers' Association for the owners and crews from the boats-with-lids. When it was established, the dismissive attitude among many young dinghy sailors had been that cruiser-racing was no more than truck-racing afloat. Yet once ICRA was there to give a face to this seagoing truck-racing, it emerged that the "young dismissives" had simply been looking for an accessible contact-point.

The crew of Outrajeous (Johnny Murphy at centre) have become accustomed to ICRA success

But once ICRA was in being, it found that many of the features of Irish C/R sailing that seemingly had been rubbing along smoothly enough were in fact badly in need of a more friction-free existence, and ICRA provided an agency that could immediately – and with increasing experience – focus usefully on the problem.

It seemingly doesn't aspire to be a clearcut national authority of any recognisable kind. Yet at a time when the big and powerful clubs are on manoeuvres again, ICRA's voice for the consumers is heard when it needs to be heard.

BIG CLUBS ON MANOEUVRES

For these days, the inevitably contentious America's Cup may be seen as a peak of international sailing, yet in the final analysis it is an inter-club event. As for this year's Fastnet Race Centenary, not only is it entirely run by the Royal Ocean Racing Club, but its revival of the Admiral's Cup is going to be between two boat teams put forward by clubs. And the Bermuda Race, the Sydney Hobart and the Middle Sea Race are all club events.

The start of the annual Sydney-Hobart Race is of national interest, yet it continues as a club event. Photo: Studio Borlenghi

It had been hoped that offshore racing in some form could be introduced in the 2024 Olympics in France, but the idea ran into the sand. And international offshore racing events between national teams have had a very mixed history. It could be argued that cruiser-racers (as we seem to insist on calling them in Ireland) are too individualistic to sail as nationals, but a club squad within a quietly co-ordinating mutually-agreed association is much more to their taste.

So if some earth-shattering decision emerges from this morning's ICRA conference, we should be alarmed. ICRA is not there to be earth-shattering. It is there to keep the consumers happy, and keep things running smoothly.

Thus we could almost suggest that ICRA is much older than 23 years. Before 2002, it had been there in an amorphous form, hidden in plain sight. It took the vision of Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns to discern its outlines, and give them enough form to function smoothly, and enable Irish cruiser-racing to function more smoothly with it. We are very fortunate to have it.

Setting for a quietly important conference – the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire