All Ireland Sailing Championship Invitees Prepare for Lough Ree Battle in SB20s

24th September 2018

SB20 sportsboats, pictured here during September's staging of the European Championships on Dublin Bay, will be used in next week's All Ireland Sailing Champs on Lough Ree Credit: Afloat.ie

There's just over one week to the Irish Sailing All Ireland Sailing Championships, taking place in Lough Ree Yacht Club in Co. Westmeath, 6-7th of October.

The competitors represent sixteen of the thirty-nine Irish Sailing 'eligible' affiliated classes, but all will compete against each other in one type of boat – this year the event is being sailed in SB20 keelboats.

There are two women in this year’s competition: Aisling Keller (Lough Derg Yacht Club / Royal Irish Yacht Club / Trinity Sailing Club) who will team up with Olympian Finn Lynch (National YC), and Jocelyn Hill (Co. Antrim YC) representing the RS200s. Jocelyn will be one of five sailors from Northern Ireland. Past winners Fionn Lyden (Baltimore SC) and Alex Barry (Royal Cork Yacht Club / Monkstown Bay Sailing Club) will compete alongside Liam Glynn (Ballyholme Yacht Club / UCD Sailing Club) fresh from his bronze medal win in the U21 Laser World Championships in Poland this summer.

Each competitor has been nominated as a result of past wins and class rankings. This year they will sail SB20 keelboats, which are designed for a crew of three or four. Each nominee selects one crew member, and they are joined by a third crew member who represents the boat owner.

Racing will consist of two “flights” or heats. The top three from each flight go straight into the final. The remaining competitors who placed 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th compete in a 2-race “repêchage”, and the top two then enter the Final also. The Final race, therefore, has eight teams competing.

The All Ireland Sailing Championships or “Helmsman’s Cup” has run since 1947 and aims to find sailing's “champion of champions”.

Read the current entry list here

Published in All Irelands

Tagged under

All Ireland Sailing Championships

About The Author

Treasa Cox

Email The Author

Treasa Cox is Head of Communications at Irish Sailing

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.