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Displaying items by tag: Colin Dougan

Ben Mulligan has been relected as Flying fifteen President for another term at the recent annual general meeting of the class. Colin Dougan. A number of  new fixtures were proposed for the 2011 season including Larne, County Antrim YC (Whitehead), Cushendall and the National YC. Dun Laoghaire's NYC made no secret of the fact it would like to host the class national championships,  a reasonable ambition given it holds the biggest  fleet in the country (20 or more boats). As the Worlds are in July next year at Hayling Island SC in the UK it was again agreed to have only four events next season. It was also agreed that the venues for 2011 would be agreed at a committee meeting in Carlingford in September.

Published in Flying Fifteen

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)