The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) has confirmed that Ireland will return to Cowes this summer with a competitive team for the Brewin Dolphin Commodores’ Cup.
Anthony O’Leary of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, who led the 2010 team to the first major Irish victory on The Solent, is set to be confirmed as captain of the three-boat squad.
His Ker-designed 39ft Antix will be part of the team. And many of the 2010 crew that were almost exclusively Munster-based will be sailing again on Antix or on the other boats.
A Dublin flavour will be added this year with the Grand Soleil 43ft Quokka, under charter to Michael Boyd and Niall Dowling of the Royal Irish Yacht Club.
While this crew will be training on another boat in the Warsash Spring Series and other events on The Solent, Boyd will compete on Quokka in the Caribbean 600 race in two weeks.
The third boat is Catapult, a Ker 40 owned by American Mark Glimcher and is a previous US IRC National champion that is expected to be shipped to Europe at the end of this month along with it's support containers ahead of an intensive crew-training phase.
Competitive teams
Catapult's crew will be a mix of regulars as well as Irish sailors including Olympians Peter O'Leary
and Dan O’Grady who competed on board at last month’s Key West Race Week, placing third in class.
As far as the competition itself runs, the closing date for entries is not until June. So the international line-up is still uncertain except that Britain and France are likely to field strong teams and that Sail Canada has entered a team.
While Irish teams endured years of being tipped as the team to beat in previous Commodores’ Cup events, 2010 ended a run of being pipped to the post with the Hong Kong team placing closest runner-up in a 10-team event.
While the recession put paid to any defence in 2012, Hong Kong entered as firm favourites only to be soundly beaten into sixth place while Britain topped the seven-team event.
“The timing is quite good as we have almost five months preparation time,” said Barry Rose, ICRA co-ordinator for the team. “Last time was earlier but we have a more intensive schedule so we’re in a good place.”
The series will be staged at Cowes from July 17th to 25th and will include inshore and longer-distance offshore races.
Meanwhile, the Irish Sailing Association has announced details of nominations for the Sailor of the Year award to be announced at the annual conference ball in the Royal Marine Hotel, Dún Laoghaire, on Saturday March 1st.
The nominations for the award are: Philip Bendon, Youth European Match Racing Champion; David Kenefick, Rookie Champion of Offshore Racing; and Annalise Murphy, Laser Radial European Champion.
Other categories of awards include the Youth Sailor of the Year.
