ICRA has published provisional class divisions for next week's 73–boat national championship fleet at Howth Yacht Club. The divisions are as expected but this year's class two has been forced to combine boats that in previous championships sailed in classes two and three but due to numbers in 2016 are sailing as one class next week. See full table below with divisions, IRC TCC and ECHO handicaps.

The cruiser–racer national championships is to be staged at the north Dublin venue for a record fifth time. The three day event, from next Friday, will decide eight national titles and Corinthian Cups across a combined fleet Read more about the championships here.

Howth Yacht Club and ICRA have revealed the trophies for next week's cruiser–racer national championships to be staged at the north Dublin venue for a record fifth time. The three day event, from next Friday, will decide eight national titles and Corinthian Cups across a combined fleet of 80–plus boats. ISA medals will be awarded in each class. Read more about the championships here

Next month's ICRA Nationals at Howth Yacht Club is aiming to attract both spinnaker and white sail sailors and HYC have gone to some lengths to promote its commercial free waters in this latest youtube video. 

The ICRA Nationals are returning to Howth Yacht Club for a record fifth time. 

The organising committee are finalising an exciting and varied racing programme over the 3 days, along with an excellent social programme of shore side activities. With three weeks to go to first gun, it will be a very special event both on and off the water.

For the Corinthian Cups two classes, Race Officer Harry Gallagher and his team have been working on a number of courses, specifically designed for non-spinnaker racing: “In recognition of the fact that many non-spinnaker teams and their classes have asked that we avoid direct downwind racing, we will have a choice of two courses for Friday and Saturday (two races each day). One will be a traditional “Olympic Type” course - Triangle/Sausage/Triangle and the other will be a “Figure 4” course. Diagrams will be provided in the Sailing Instructions. These courses will be laid in positions that will not conflict with the other two courses. On Sunday, a “Passage Type” course is planned the details of which will be provided on the day”.

In the 'spinnaker classes', the three-day championships will comprise of eight fleets with racing taking place over three race areas, guaranteeing keen racing for all participants. Early indications are that there will be very competitive racing for national titles across the various fleets with the addition of a number of new boats planning to participate.

Back on shore there will be a lively social programme including a Caribbean night on Friday and a Regatta Dinner on Saturday followed with famous local band Loose Change playing until late.

The event is sponsored by McPeake Auctioneers, and in association with Dubarry, WD40 and Dublin, a Breath of Fresh Air.

Next month's ICRA Nationals at Howth Yacht Club will feature what looks like the 'hottest cruiser fleet of the year' when class one boats resume battle after last year's epic clash at Kinsale. 

Paul O'Higgins new JPK 10.80 will be up against some good J109's (including John Maybury's Joker which won ICRAs in 2015, Jelly Baby from Cork, Storm from Howth and J/109 newcomer Tim Goodbody). Also in the class one mix will be the A35 Fools Gold which was second to Joker at Kinsale and also won the Scottish series 2015 overall. Former champion, the XP33 Bon Exemple, skippered by Philip Byrne of the Royal Irish, is also a contender.

The cruiser racer body says its decision to apply 'equal status and trophies to IRC and Progressive Echo has attracted support' and overall entries for the championships is now in the sixties. The event is timed to lead into the Round Ireland​,​ WIORA and Cork Week and Calves Week in a summer of​ ​racing highlights.

Although an early discount deadline has now passed, organisers have made the decision to extend it, presumably because they see there is still lots of potential entries to still emerge in each division.

Class two should be very competitive as well with four Half Tonners vying against the home club's X332 Equinox (Ross McDonald) plus a few others. Half tonners won't have their pro sailors however as ICRA rules only allow pros in classes 0 and 1.

Dux from HYC will compete in class three

Class three will see Fusion the Corby 25 of Colwell, Cobbe and Ronan pushed by likes of Anthony Gore Grimes in Dux, the Sigma 33 s and the ICRA Commodore's family boat from Foynes Yacht Club, the McGibney's Dis a Ray. 

The event is under the experienced Chairmanship of Chris Howard who has twice before run championships with ICRA at this County Dublin venue. 

The programme will provide seven races over three day from Friday 10th to Sun 12th June with a mix of windward/leeward courses and interesting round the cans courses.

ICRA will be presenting overall matching perpetual trophies for IRC and ECHO in each Division in addition to ISA Gold, Silver and Bronze medals smartly mounted which are unique to the National championships.

ICRA's Corinthian Cups are also competed for in both Progressive Echo and IRC will provide equally interesting courses, specifically designed for the non spinnaker divisions with overall trophies and glass mountings as prizes.

It has been confirmed by the Irish Cruiser-Racing Association (ICRA) that it’s extremely unlikely that Ireland will be mounting a defence in July 2016 of the RORC Commodore’s Cup, which we so convincingly won in 2014 with the team of Catapult, Antix and Quokka 8. Apparently the defence has foundered on the difficulties of finding a person or group willing to take on the campaigning of a third boat which would be suitable to back up Anthony O’Leary’s 2014 Ker 40 Antix (ex-Catapult), and Michael Boyd’s new JPK 10.80. Michael Boyd and Anthony O’Leary had lined up a possible charter of Quokka 8 on a speculative (and expensive) retention fee in the hope that a team of optimal make-up could take shape, but no-one has proved willing to take up the costly full-charter option to make her the third boat. W M Nixon reflects on this unhappy follow-up to a good news story which helped lift Ireland out of the gloom of the recession in 2014.

The Commodore’s Cup 2016 as a Sail Training exercise? It’s one of the less crazy scenarios which is emerging from the conclusion that a realistic and highly-powered defence of Ireland’s 2014 win is simply not on the cards. The word is that the two front-line boats have been unable to find people with mega-resources and a crew willing to take up the third slot with Quokka, or possibly another boat altogether. Thus all bets are off.

To outsiders, it all sounds like a bit of the old hissy-fits, and more. Surely something could have been done? But those who have been in the midst of the Commodore’s Cup cauldron have some idea of both the stress involved (which is huge at the front of the fleet), and just how very much it is more important than ever to have a finely balanced team.

The big day – the Irish team park their tanks on the Royal Yacht Squadron lawn in Cowes after winning the Commodore’s Cup, July 2014

It all looked so easy once 2014’s win had been stitched up. But as the post-series review here on August 2nd 2014 revealed, the stresses and strains – particularly on Anthony O’Leary who did the heavy lifting in putting the team together and keeping the show on the road – were beyond most people’s imagining.

With hindsight now, it is easy to say that it was somewhere back towards Easter this year that the writing on the wall began to appear about how Ireland was going to have to opt out of the 2016 series. The new wave of Fast40+ boats on the Solent in the RORC Easter Challenge had been giving the already senior Antix a very hard time. If Anthony O’Leary and his crew were going to give of their best in campaigning their own boat in what is rapidly emerging as the hottest class in Europe, then they didn’t really need the distraction of rustling up a Commodore’s Cup team to add to their struggles.

For sure, back in 2014 the Commodore’s Cup was top billing. But the remorseless growth of the Fast 40s is making them the top show in town for 2016. They’d seven or eight of them in serious contention last year. At Easter, it was 10 and 11 boats, many of them barely out of the wrapping. In two weeks time, when they have their next major three day event on the Solent from May 20th to 22nd, we will be looking at a dozen and more boats so hot you could fry an egg on them.

Numbers like this, at this level of competition, inevitably attract the heavy hitters among owners and top professional sailors, providing a challenge which you either take head on, or opt out of altogether. For the amateur crew of Antix, it’s a case of take it or leave it. In taking it with full commitment to Fast40+ racing, they simply have to accept that they can’t overload themselves by the extra effort of running Commodore’s Cup involvement, though perhaps they could contemplate being in an Irish squad if by some miracle the perfect team package is put completely and exactly in place by some sort of offshore racing fairy godmother.

But you don’t get fairy godmothers in the rough tough world of offshore racing. The perfect dream package isn’t there, and it won’t be. So Antix and her crew of dedicated amateurs are going to be in the David and Goliath situation of throwing themselves totally into the fray of the Fast 40s, and we can only hope that the original David and Goliath scenario is replicated, for this is definitely the big boys’ game.

And yet, and yet……there’s no such thing as an inevitable outcome. Who knows what might emerge from the first proper gladiatorial confrontation of the Fast 40s in their newly confident expanded numbers? We may be saying this morning that an Irish defence is over and out. But surely it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that in the heady post-regatta atmosphere at the RORC’s Cowes base in a fortnight’s time, somebody might say: Why don’t we as a crew take a boat and join up with Antix and the new JPK 10.80 to race for Ireland?

The JPK 10.80 Courier du Leon wins the 2015 Rolex Fastnet Race

Stranger things have happened in putting Commodore’s Cup teams together in the past. In 2014, so speculative was the buildup that Anthony O’Leary admitted afterwards that until the American Ker 40 Catapult was actually unloaded from a Transatlantic ship on European soil, he wasn’t a hundred per cent convinced she was going to appear at all.

Yet ironically, there was Catapult on the quay as hoped for, after various dockside and clubhouse meetings and negotiations in Key West way back in January. But the whereabouts of the team’s third boat Quokka 8, which had been chartered by Michael Boyd and Niall Dowling, was now a matter for concern.

She’d been campaigning in the Caribbean through the winter, but had been scheduled to be shipped back in plenty of time for the start of the new RORC offshore season. But the ship she was aboard was re-routed, then re-routed again. She arrived back this side of the Atlantic barely in time for the team’s first get-together at Volvo Cork Week in July 2014. But then it all became sweetest fantasy, as Quokka won Volvo Cork Week overall, following which the Irish team won the Commodore’s Cup going away.

Quokka 8, overall winner of Volvo Cork Week 2014

So who knows what might just somehow develop. But meanwhile the critics are sharpening their knives, and there’s much muttering about it being disgraceful that Ireland doesn’t look like defending a trophy we were so pleased to win just two short years ago.

Thus a suggestion is floating around that ICRA should be prepared to allow just about any old team to go and join the scrap for the Commodore’s Cup 2016. Why not, they suggest, just allow three J/109s to go along to represent the Ould Sod, and give their crews a real taste of sailing at the sharp end?

Certainly the Commodore’s Cup as a Sail Training event has a distinct Quixotic appeal. But underneath the whole story is the reality that while in places like the Solent the top end of high-profile sailing is invariably dominated by professionals, within and around Ireland we don’t really do professional competitive sailing at all.

We’re compulsive and obsessive amateurs, and that’s the way we like it. If our sailing isn’t fitted in to cherished little slivers of free time carved out of the day job, then we don’t really think it’s genuine sport at all. Thus while it’s fine and dandy every so often to take on the Solent heavies and maybe just occasionally show them the way, we’d just as soon save our limited holiday time for a proper tilt at the West Cork Regattas or events like the ICRA Nationals, where we’re racing against people we know, and not shelling out money for exorbitant Cowes rentals. Like it or not, that’s the way we are.

Meanwhile, it’s rumoured that the 2018 Commodore’s Cup will be based of teams of just two boats each. Now they tell us…….But that’s not teams. That’s multiple doubles matches.

A demanding animal to sail. The tiller-steered Ker 40 Antix is not for the faint-hearted

Read also: ICRA Statement on 2016 Irish Commodore's Cup team

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Commodore's Cup team manager Norbert Reilly has issued the following statement on Ireland's participation efforts in the 2016 Commodore's Cup regatta.

'Despite the efforts of all concerned ICRA regrets to announce that it has not been possible to find a sponsor for the Team’s third boat. We have had excellent partners in working to put the Team together and we had two top boats. It is unfortunate in that it appears this may be the last year of three boat teams and Ireland were considered as favourites to retain the cup.

ICRA is still prepared to consider applications to put together a Training Team and suggests that boats with a number of young crew aboard would be ideal as they will get world class experience without the pressure of entering as the event favourites'.

Read also: Will Any Irish Commodore’s Cup Defence Be Only A Sail Training Exercise?

Beautiful sunshine and a wide range of wind speeds greeted the participants of the two day training weekend organised by Simon McGibney from ICRA/WIORA and Des McWilliam and Graham Curran of UK McWilliam Sailmakers. This was the second year of the training clinic, successfully hosted again by Tralee Bay Sailing Club with boats from the Royal Western Yacht Club, Galway Bay Sailing Club, Foynes Yacht Club and Tralee Bay Sailing Club taking part.

Building on the format developed last year the weekend began with an early start for a long day on the water with OOD Peter Moore and his team from TBSC. Des and Graham were on the water in RIBs and followed the fleet throughout the day, observing and videoing race starts, mark roundings, tacks, gybes, sail trim etc. They also went onboard boats to watch crews as they went through procedures and throughout the day were able to interject with advice when required.

The race team got in seven races on a windward leeward course with the addition of a gate to ensure boats completed gybing manoeuvres downwind. To keep racing interesting crews had to listen out for any ‘special instructions’ from the OOD such as every boat must put in a certain number of tacks before the windward mark. Racing was very close with an evenly matched fleet of boats competing. The weekend also included practice race starts which consisted of eight races starts run off one after another with just three minute countdowns. Exhausting work for crews but great for practicing skills! Saturday drew to a close with BBQ in clubhouse overlooking the beautiful Tralee Bay a full debrief session an each of the skills where crews had the opportunity to watch some of the recorded footage of the day. After the debrief session Elaine O’Mahoney from Foynes Yacht Club ran a very entertaining nautical quiz, which the participants really enjoyed.

Graham Curran of UK McWilliam Sailmakers onboard Huntress 

There was plenty of chat about the live results that were efficiently provided by ICRA’s scoring guru Denis Kiely and could be accessed by competitors between races out on the water on ICRA’s website www.cruiserracing.ie.

Racing on Sunday began early again – something about being ashore for a Kerry/Dublin football match! The training team got in another seven races to bring the tally to fourteen for the two day training clinic. The weekend concluded with a final debrief session with Des and Graham and a lot of happy crews went home with a bit more knowledge on how to improve their racing. Looking forward to the next one! Would highly recommend this training clinic to any club to organise. Contact can made with Des through here 

Flanders has entered July's Commodore's Cup. The continental North Sea coast team has signed up today in a further expansion of the Cup's reach. It is the latest news for a reformatted 2016 competition. There is no information so far on an Irish team (or teams), other than the Irish Cruiser Racer Association has said it hopes to send two teams to the Solent.

Up against powerful multiple team entries from France and Britain in July's Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup, will be the newly announced Flanders Nord team. This will comprise three leading race boats from the continental North Sea coast: Frans Rodenburg's Elke from the Netherlands, Philippe Bourgeois' Dunkerque - Les Dunes de Flandre from northeasternmost France and François Goubau's well-travelled Moana from Belgium.

While the large British and French contingent is a little daunting, the Flanders team can relax slightly in the knowledge the defending champion, Ireland, won with a single team in 2014. Plus, many of the crew in the Flanders Nord team have past experience of the Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup.

Heavyweight of Flanders Nord, with what could be the longest boat competing this year, is François Goubau's 2001 generation Beneteau First 47.7, Moana. Goubau, who is Commodore of the Royal Belgian Sailing Club, has campaigned Moana in three previous Commodores' Cups, first with the Belgium team in 2002 and most recently with Team Benelux in 2012.

"We like the Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup because its organisation is very professional and the level of competition is so high," says Moana's trimmer/tactician Luc Geirnaert. He adds that they also enjoy the unique 'team' aspect to the event and try to make a point of racing in the Solent at least once each season.

In addition to the Commodores' Cup, Moana has competed in eight Rolex Fastnet Races, won her class at Cowes Week, has twice been victorious in the Dutch IRC National Championship and its Belgium equivalent and was runner up at the 2012 UK IRC Nationals - "after a stupid false start in the last race," as Geirnaert remembers.

A typical Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup entry, Moana is a family affair and sailing on board with père Goubau, will be his wife Michèle Gelhausen and trio of sons Laurent, Mathieu and Alexis plus a group of friends. While the rules for this year's event have been amended slightly from 2014, now allowing up to six professionals (World Sailing Group 3 sailors) to compete across each three boat team (rather than one or two on each boat), Moana will be sailing with no pros on board.

"Our team is delighted to race the Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup again," says skipper Philippe Bourgeois. "We are the 'southener' of the Flanders team, but it was a great pleasure to accept he proposition of Mathieu and François Goubau to be part of this Flanders team with Belgium and Netherlands boats."

Already there is some crossover between the Dunkerque-Les Dunes de Flandres and Moana teams with several Dunkerque crew having raced on Moana in past Fastnet races and in the 2012 Commodores' Cup.

If Moana is the Flanders team's 'big boat', Bourgeois' competitive Archambault A35, will be its 'small boat'. Bourgeois congratulates the RORC for responding to competitor feedback from the last race by providing the smaller boats (ie with an IRC TCC of 1.000-1.049) with their own starts at this year's regatta.

"We do like racing in the Solent," continues Bourgeois. "The Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup is a great event, very well organised and with high level competitors."

Prior to the event, Dunkerque-Les Dunes de Flandres will be back in the UK for the RORC's Myth of Malham Race in which she won her class in 2013 and for the UK IRC Nationals at end of June. "They will be a good training for our crew for our big event this season - the Commodores' Cup," concludes Bourgeois.

The third boat in the Flanders Nord team is Frans Rodenburg's First 40, Elke. Last year Elke competed in the North Sea Race and in the Rolex Fastnet Race, and is making her Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup debut this summer.

Welcoming the Flanders Nord team to the Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup, RORC CEO Eddie Warden Owen said: "This is a good team. Moana we know from previous Commodores' Cups is very well sailed and knows the waters; Dunkerque-Les Dunes de Flandres was very competitive at the recent RORC Easter Challenge and we know the First 40 is a good all round performer, so they will be a good team to watch and we are delighted to have them announce their commitment so early."

Organised by the Royal Ocean Racing Club, the Brewin Dolphin Commodores' Cup is the club's biennial grand prix for amateur crews. Racing takes place over 23rd-30th July on a mix of inshore and offshore courses in the Solent and around the English Channel.

The ICRA Nationals returns to Howth Yacht Club in early June, timed to lead into the Round Ireland​,​ WIORA and Cork Week and Calves Week to round off a summer of​ ​racing.

The ​combination of IRC and Progressive Echo divisions in all Classes with equal Trophies and ISA National Championship Gold, Silver and Bronze medals ensures strong interest through the fleets.  The event is under the experienced Chairmanship of Chris Howard who has twice before run championships with ICRA at this County Dublin venue. 

An early entry list is admittedly still building but it already features top boats with the likes of Conor Phelan's Jump Juice returning from his success in March's RORC's Easter Challenge.

Early indications are that the hottest fleet could be in class one where, like ICRAs in 2015, some of the most competitive sailing took place. Paul O'Higgins new JPK 10.80 will be up against some good J109's (including John Maybury's Joker which won ICRAs in 2015, Jelly Baby from Cork, Storm from Howth and J/109 newcomer Tim Goodbody). Also in the class one mix will be the A35 Fools Gold which was second to Joker at Kinsale and also won the Scottish series 2015 overall. Former champion, the XP33 Bon Exemple, skippered by Philip Byrne, is also a contender.

Class two should be competitive as well with four Half Tonners vying against the home club's X332 Equinox (Ross McDonald) plus a few others. Half tonners won't have their pro sailors however as ICRA rules only allow pros in classes 0 and 1.

Class three will see Fusion the Corby 25 of Colwell, Cobbe and Ronan pushed by likes of Anthony Gore Grimes in Dux, the Sigma 33 s and of course, the ICRA Commodore's family boat from Foynes Yacht Club, the McGibney's Dis a Ray. 

Class four will see current National Champions Kilcullen the local Howth Yacht Club youth J24 team take on the J24 fleet including the ICRA Commodore Simon MC Gibney the well sailed quarter Tonners and likes of Impalas who can all feature on their day

The Corinthian Cup​s​ ​are well established for the non spinnaker boats and ​are expected to attract a large fleet.

The early Discount deadline for the ICRA Nationals is 6 th May so get your entry in and enjoy great racing and a fun social scene ashore.

I am a passionate believer in the concept that sailing is ‘a sport for all and a sport for life’. I took to heart a slogan to this effect promoted by the Irish Sailing Association a few years ago. I have advanced that concept since I first heard it. Nowadays I wonder if how many true believers there are in this concept. While I fully support the need for a national sailing association and believe that it means what was said about ‘a sport for all’ I don’t see that concept, simple, direct and embracing in its description advanced as a major focus of the Association. I may be missing something but when last did you see the ISA state this concept forcefully in a public message?
I do not want to be perceived as a critic of the ISA because I am not. I am committed to the essential necessity of sporting representation through a strong national organisation. However, having observed, listened to and received various approaches in recent years from those who have challenged the ISA and, in fairness to them and the ISA executive authorities, created a degree of change, I have a degree of concern that the effective level of national association relationships with and to clubs and ‘the ordinary’ club sailors (not a particularly nice description but perhaps apt), could do with more attention.
I chaired a debate on whether sailing is a welcoming sport at the annual conference of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association in Limerick and was encouraged by the response of delegates there, but they also raised questions about the Irish Sailing Association. It has launched a ‘Try Sailing Initiative’ through associated clubs and training centres. “This is building on last year’s inaugural success of this approach,” Gail McAllister, ISA Regional Development Officer for the Southern Region, told me. “The ISA is partnering with the Marine Institute in Galway and this will see a thorough implementation of initiatives and a strong promotional campaign introducing the public to the joys of sailing. We have a firm belief that you have to take your message to the people at least as much as you expect people to come to your club. We want to make it clear that all are welcome - and genuinely welcome at that.”
I agree with and support those comments. Effort is being put into raising participation levels in the sport. There are attempts to counteract falling membership numbers and an ageing profile amongst boatowners in many. It is my view that the sport is more popular than it was in past years, despite a fall-off in numbers in recent times. The challenge is to put in place plans to maintain growth for the future and to remove, once-and-for-all the, image of sailing as being an ‘elitist’ sport.
On my own boat I have a policy of trying to introduce at least one new crew member to the sport every year. May I recommend that to club members throughout the country? Meantime perhaps you would listen to my Podcast this week where I interview the new Commodore of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association, Simon McGibney, the first West of Ireland sailor to hold the post. I spoke to him in Limerick at the end of the annual meeting of ICRA. He is committed to expanding involvement in sailing and in racing and he believes this will happen. At the start of the interview I congratulated this member of Foynes Sailing Club on being the first West of Ireland Commodore of ICRA.
• Listen to Podcast below