Time was when the Student Yachting Worlds in France was quite the thing, and never more so than in October 2008 when National Universities Champion Nin O’Leary of Cork Institute of Technology won it for Ireland from a very international field. But as it’s “run by students for students” through the Paris Polytech, it has had a very uneven history for what should be a major world event, as the rapid turnover of Parisian college sailors and their club officers does not always provide the most solid administrative continuity.
Nevertheless, for the Irish Universities, it provided double value in its good times, as each year the Irish representative squad was simply the winner of the IUSA Keelboat Nationals. Thus even if there were glitches in the staging of the Worlds, the team from Ireland were already garlanded in the honour of the national title.
But with the uneven spread of the pandemic leading to major international sailing events being under total lockdown in different countries at different times, it has actually been three clear years since the Irish Universities Sailing Association Keelboat Nationals have been held, as the Worlds went into abeyance and are still in some sort of limbo.
In these weird circumstances, the best solution is simply to resume where they left off back in March 2019 at Howth as though the lost years never happened, with ten teams returning to race the HYC flotilla of J/80s on March 26th & 27th, and with Scorie Walls resuming her role as Race Officer.
If acronyms are your thing, then you can revel in all this, as the full preview of the event is summed up by stating that on 26-27 March 2022, HYC will be hosting the WY&SMS IUSA Nats 2022 for UCCx2, CITx2, UCD, TUD, DCU, NUIG, QUB & TCD.
IUSA sponsors 2022
The elucidation of all that is that the Howth Yacht Club-hosted Western Yacht & Small Craft Surveyors-sponsored Irish Universities Sailing Association Keelboat Nationals for 2022 will see racing by two teams from University College Cork, two teams from Cork Institute of Technology, and teams from University College Dublin, Technological University Dublin (formerly DIT, alma mater of sailing legend Gordon Maguire), Dublin City University. National University of Ireland Galway, Queens University Belfast, and Trinity College Dublin.
In terms of college life and sport, a gap of three years is forever. But for those who are interested in pre-history, the word is that back in March 2019 in increasingly brisk winds, the winners were CIT with Harry Durcan as helm and Grattan Roberts as tactician with crew of Ewan O’Keeffe, Mark Murphy, and Morgan Knight. But it was a close run if very Corkonian thing, as they beat UCC by just one point.
After a ferociously-fought final in a rising March wind, UCC lost by only one point.
