Sailing:The annual conference of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) in Galway last weekend proved a useful forum to mark the continued success of Irish sailors both home and abroad.
While the twin issues of handicapping and the Rolex Commodore's Cup were themes throughout the day, the highlight was the awarding of the Yacht of the Year trophy to Ger O'Rourke for his campaign on Chieftain, his year-old Cookson 50-footer.
The potential of Chieftain's canting-keel technology that delivered sleigh-ride performances at major international events was another common topic among delegates, but it was the impressive array of divisional and overall victories won by the Limerick skipper and his mostly amateur crew that delivered the overall title.
Barely one year after the boat, racing here as Kingspan Chieftain, was launched in New Zealand, O'Rourke added possibly his best scalp to date when he emerged overall winner of the Round Britain and Ireland Race in August.
The 1,760-mile course took the 28 starters from Cowes west to Land's End, before crossing the Celtic Sea to the passage up Ireland's Atlantic seaboard and home waters to O'Rourke's team.
This was the sixth edition of the race and only the third time it had been sailed non-stop.
The Irish winner averaged 20 knots for 30 hours and peaked at 26 knots coming down England's east coast to Dover. Luckily, they had a favourable tide when the wind died off the Kent coast which they carried to the finishing-line off Cowes.
"We had fantastic crew-work, which counted, as we had bigger winds and seas than the Sydney to Hobart Race," O'Rourke said after crossing the finishing-line. "We had to ease off the power to avoid burying the bow in the next wave ahead."
The helm was changed every half hour to give the crew a break as the boat surfed down eight-metre waves.
While sailing south through the North Sea, O'Rourke called various oil rigs for permission to cross their safety zones and received incredulous replies from controllers who were tracking a vessel on radar making speeds in excess of 20 knots.
Meanwhile, though the issue of Ireland's narrow defeat in Cowes during the Commodore's Cup may be again parsed in this column at a later date, handicapping remains a hot chestnut.
Yacht handicapping generally works by applying a Time Correcting Factor (the handicap) to each boat's actual finishing time, and then re-sorts a fleet by the corrected finishing order to produce an overall winner.
The popularity of the IRC-system received widespread support at the ICRA conference, though the problem of dealing with the advantages of custom-designed "all-out racing machines" versus standard production boats was aired.
Recently, some local Irish fleets have resolved to split the IRC boats into production and custom divisions, though concern remains at national level that this could result in dilution of numbers.
At the same time, the often-vexed subject of Ireland's proprietary Echo handicap system was also touched upon. This works by penalising a winning or well-sailed boat from event to event in order to allow less-competitive crews a chance to claim prizes.
Worked on mathematical, non-design principles, Echo sometimes fails in its intentions when boats that win under IRC-handicap used at the same event also win or place highly under Echo; a review of the system is now due.
Yet in defence of Echo, Ireland is being widely cited as a model for cruiser-racers in other countries for its dual-scoring approach and is, in part at least, responsible for the health of fleets around the country.
