Busy September for ILCA/Lasers
ILCA sailing at Royal Cork kicks off with an away trip to Iniscarra on Sept 7th for a sprint series event. The Iniscarra sprint is an interesting event for our sailors with some testing shifts and narrow course. It also washes the salt off after summer sailing.
The following weekend sees the sprint series finale event with racing on the Curlane bank and the final standings of the series being decided after five previous regattas. The finale event has a final points weighting of 1.5 and so can shake up the final series standings.
The Irish Schools Sailing association has teamed up with the ILCA Summer sprint series to offer a fleet championship event for schools on Sept 14th at Royal Cork Yacht Club. The focus of sailing at schools level has been on team racing, but the rebranding of Irish School Sailing from Irish Schools Team Racing Association has opened an opportunity to fleet racing at a schools level.
Developing an event from the ground up is very challenging so a decision was made to incorporate the first Munster Schools fleet racing championships into an existing event. The ILCA Summer sprint series has been running for a number of years with its finale scheduled for Crosshaven on September 14th after events in Glandore, Kinsale, Cove, Bantry and Iniscarra.
The sailors can enter the sprint event as an individual and as part of a schools team and the top four scores from a school will count toward the munster championship final score. Sailors will still qualify for any individual prizes from the sprint event.
More information can be found here: https://www.royalcork.com/ilca-summer-sprint-series/
Finn Lynch, Ewan McMahon are the latest senior Irish sailors to confirm their attendance to the ILCA Ireland End of Season Event to be held at Royal Cork Yacht Club on Sept 27th/28th. Finn and Ewan may be joined by a number of international ILCA 7 sailors coming straight from a senior training camp in Schull. Finn represented Ireland at the 2024 Olympics and Ewan is hoping to challenge him for a place at the LA Olympics in 2028. Ewan has achieved some super results in 2025.
Fiachra McDonnell, Tom Coulter will also compete against the best of the local sailors to try and best the two 2028 Olympic campaigners. Event organiser Eddie Kingston (rcyclasers@gmail.com) expects sailors from all the harbour clubs to measure themselves against these Olympic class sailors in the 50th year of competitive ILCA(laser) racing in Ireland.
In the extremely competitive ILCA 6 fleet, Sienna Wright, Lucy Ives, Bobby Driscoll, Conor Cronin will be battling it out in this counting event to represent Ireland at the Youth sailing worlds in Vilamoura in December. They will also compete against some local Cork sailors Eolann Miles, Dara Jenkins. Several masters from apprentice to grand master will also compete for the masters titles. Sean Craig is defending an impeccable record in 2025, but will face local legend Rob Jeffreys in the GM category.
Eve McMahon is hoping to be at the event to support her brother and all the female sailors. No doubt, she was happy seeing three female sailors in the top five at the nationals with Sienna being victorious. We will delighted to see Eve after her hugely successful year.
The in form Max O’Hare will also have to compete against three Royal Cork sailors who recently finished in the top 10 at the ILCA nationals in Ballyholme. Blake Vaughan, Conor Lynch and Daisy Walsh hope to podium on their home waters.
The event will feature the use of robotic marks and a challenging race course under the direction of Race Office John Corkery.
For details on entry go to: https://ilcaireland.com/event/end-of-season-2025/
All other info on royalcork.com/ilca-ireland-endofseason2025
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