Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: 20x20

The National Yacht Club has signed up to the 20×20 initiative to encourage more women and girls to get involved in sport.

Increasing the visibility of women in sport is the focus of 20x20, and so far over 600 clubs across Ireland have signed up to the initiative.

The NYC says it is “thrilled to celebrate the longstanding achievements of its women members and to encourage more women to get involved in sailing at all levels”.

This begins at the earliest stages, where the junior section “keeps a keen eye on ensuring that girls get involved”, while the Women on the Water network “has been encouraging beginners and rusty sailors back into dinghy and keelboat sailing for over six years, generating a vibrant and supportive community across the club”.

The NYC adds: “Across all levels and ages, women members are valued boat owners, helms and crew members, and are involved in leadership roles in sailing, including race management in the club and in DBSC.”

Highlights include NYC’s involvement in running the Irish Sailing Pathfinder Women at the Helm regatta in 2019 and being selected to run it a second time in 2020, while the NYC’s women are also represented in ISORA racing and the recent Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race.

“Strength, fitness, inclusion, respect, leadership: these are key values of 20×20. What better role models than NYC members, Olympic silver medal winner and Tokyo 2020 competitor Annalise Murphy and Commodore of the Dublin Bay Sailing Club, Ann Kirwan.”

Published in National YC
Tagged under

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)