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Displaying items by tag: Hugh O'Connor

#Topper - Hugh O’Connor of the National Yacht Club was presented with the Topper Challenge Cup for the series last weekend at Rush Sailing Club.

Afloat.ie’s Junior Sailor of the Month for August amassed a string of impressive victories this season, including the second and third Traveller events, the Southern Championships and the O’Tiarnaigh Topper Challenge.

Ireland’s number-one Topper sailor also placed second in the Irish Nationals and Winter Championships — not to mention his stellar podium performance at the Topper Worlds in China.

Fellow NYC sailor Natasha Hemeryck was presented with the overall third place trophy in the series for 2018. Over the year, Hemeryck came in first in the Winter Championships, second at the Traveller 2 and Northern Championships and fifth at the Irish Nationals.

Caoimhe Seymour (NYC) came second overall for the series in the 4.2 Rig and was presented with her trophy at Rush Sailing Club, where the NYC was well represented for the fifth Traveller and last Topper event of the 2018 calendar.

Seymour maintained a consistent place through out the series, coming in third in the Irish Nationals, Winter Championships and Northern Championships, and first in the Traveller 4.

Meanwhile, NYC sailors in Rush included Seymour (third in the 4.2 rig), Adam Irvin, Eoghan Turner (second overall), Deirdre Turner, Mathew O’Brien Holohan and Hugh O’Connor, who finished third in the U17 amid challenging, windy and gusty conditions.

Sixty-two competitors signed up for the event, which the class association said was a fantastic number for the final Topper Traveller in the 2018 series.

Published in Topper

#Topper - Hugh O’Connor of the National Yacht Club took second place among the biggest fleet yet at at the Topper World Championships in Shenzhen, China earlier this week.

Conditions were light and wet with lots of humidity, and with only two races completed in the 5.3 fleet an official world champion could not be crowned.

Despite the difficult sailing conditions, O’Connor topped a list of strong results for the Irish in Shenzhen.

Erin McIlwaine of Newcastle YC finishd as first lady and sixth overall, while the Royal Cork’s Hugh Lynch and David Jones were fifth and ninth respectively.

In the 4.2 fleet, Joe O’Sullivan (RCYC) was the top Irish sailor with a 14th-place overall finish.

Published in Topper

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)