Ambitious plans for a new boat to suit Irish needs

SAILING:CRUISER-RACER chiefs have found space in tomorrow's packed conference schedule to hear ambitious plans for a new Irish concept boat aimed at the bulk of the racing fleet here.

A group of Irish sailors have formed a consortium that is developing the new boat – yet to be named – and are targeting Class 2, Class 3, and Class 4 sailors.

The project gets its first public airing tomorrow morning in front of an expert audience that includes IRC designers Mark Mills and John Corby.

The project, the brainchild of J92 sailor Rory Staunton from Mayo Sailing Club, aims to lower the cost of entry to offshore cruising and racing in these economically challenging times.

The design, says Staunton, will be a “natural bridge” between club sailing and Commodores Cup level. It’s also being studied as a possible platform for match racing events too.

The boat can be transported by road using a family car (ie no need for a commercial licence or 4 x 4 jeep) to numerous locations, opening up the opportunity to visit east, south, west and north coast venues, as part of a cruising and racing circuit, which, he says, many ICRA members would like to visit but getting there by sea takes too long.

The conference begins at 10am in the Carrigaline Court Hotel and concludes tomorrow night with a Commodores Cup celebration dinner at the Royal Cork Yacht Club.

Although plans are well advanced on the design of the craft, Staunton says he is more interested in the characteristics of the buyers than the boat itself right now. He wants to ask sailors what they would like to see in this new boat? The assumption is that owners here are able to sell their existing boat! New designs are also on the table in West Cork where David Harte has launched a prototype TR3.6 two-person dinghy produced especially for next season’s Team Racing World Championships to be held in Schull.

The new boat will not be used tomorrow, however for the National Team Racing Championships. As excitement mounts for next year’s World Championships in the town, entries for the weekend fixture have hit a record 21 teams. Following this event the top Irish team racers will be invited to put themselves forward for selection for the teams to represent Ireland in both the Open and under 19 categories at the Worlds. ITRA will invite selected teams to a trial event early in 2011.

In offshore news, the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association (ISORA) has published its 2011 calendar and changed the scoring of each race to the High Score system. It will apply weightings for races depending on the complexity of the race. The aim is to better reward the winner and participants of longer races with bigger fleets.

Ireland’s top sailors are back on the water again next weekend for the rerun of the Irish Sailing Association’s (ISA) All-Ireland Sailing Championships.

The original event was abandoned due to lack of wind this week. Next week’s competition is being recognised as a new event so no previous points shall be carried forward. The eight finalists, including Nicholas O’Leary aiming for a hat-trick, are Anthony O’Leary, Neil Kenefick, Ewen Barry, Garrett May, Niall Henry, James Espey and Nick Walsh.

Significantly the event is to be staged in Kinsale but run by the original hosts Royal Cork due to the difficulty in safely sailing the ISA’s J80 fleet from its current base at Kinsale to Crosshaven.