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Displaying items by tag: Global Challenge

#SEASICKNESS - A surprising 62% of crew members on board yachts taking part in the Global Challenge experienced seasickness at least once along the 27,000-mile route.

Those are the findings of a survey undertaken by Yachting World of the 223 crew involved in the latest edition of the wrong-way-round-the-world race, as magazine Yachting Monthly reports.

The survey focused on the penultimate leg of the race from Boston to La Rochelle in France. The majority of crew were declared to have no prior disposition to seasickness and were allocated on boats by various other criteria, making the results a "reflection of susceptibility among the population at large".

The results were staggering, with almost two-thirds of crew experiencing seasickness. Though the figures were mostly evenly distributed across the fleet, on one boat the vast majority of those on board were seasick.

Factors that appear to influence the rate of seasickness include age (those older than the peak age of 24 were less susceptible), gender (more women then men were seasick on average) and wind angle (seasickness was less common on downwind stretches).

The sample survey shows that 84% of crew were able to carry on working despite being seasick, but the remaining 16% - localised to a small number of boats - were incapacitated by vomiting and dry-heaving. Recovery time, however, was quick, with even the worst cases improvsing within five days.

Yachting Monthly has much more on the story HERE.

Published in News Update

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)