Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Think Before You Flush

An Taisce’s Clean Coasts programme and Uisce Éireann have launched their Think Before You Flush campaign for 2023, reminding people to the mindful of what we should and should’t put down our toilets.

In Cork city last week, as the Cork Independent reports, Lord Mayor Deirdre Forde signed the Think Before You Flush pledge — which you can also sign yourself at thinkbeforeyouflush.org — supporting the annual campaign which focuses on understanding the impact of flushing sewage-related waste and how to dispose of such waste properly.

Margaret Attridge of Uisce Éireann added: “Every day thousands of unsuitable items are flushed down toilets across Ireland instead of being put in the bin.”

Flushing unsuitable items such as baby wipes or cotton buds can result in blockages or even in such waste littering Ireland’s coastal beaches and inland waterways.

This waste is the third largest category of beach litter and can pose a danger to marine wildlife, the campaign says.

The Cork Independent has more on the story HERE.

Published in Coastal Notes

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)