CIT Sailing Club to host the 1st Student Match Racing Cup in Ireland.
Wednesday 24 January 2007
On the 9th of February 2007 the CIT Sailing Club is to host the first ever Student Match Racing Cup in Ireland. This event is pioneered by the club members themselves and is open only to the top 5 Colleges in Ireland.
Using the America’s Cup format, each race will see two boats on the starting line at a set time. Set on a windward-leeward course, each team will try and use the rules of sailing and collision regulations to gain advantage over their adversaries. A race is decided in less than ten minutes and the result is from a best of three races. There will be a round-robin then, if the weather permits, the event will go to semi’s then to a final to be decided from a best of five races.
The event will be held in Schull, West Cork. After some consideration the obvious choice of boat for the event is the ‘1720’. This high-performance sports-boat is named after the founding year of the Royal Cork Yacht Club. The ‘1720’ carries a crew of five people and for this event won’t be making use of its Asymmetric Spinnaker.
The teams chosen for this event come from the 5 top ranked colleges on the Intervarsity Team Racing Circuit. This circuit is held in Firefly’s and in recent years the level of competition seen on this circuit has become very high. The winner of the circuit is chosen to represent Ireland at the Student World Cup held in France every year. Trinity College won the last event and have secured themselves a place at the world to defend the Cup.
Cork Institute of Technology Sailing Club who had not won an event in 4 years is currently ranked the top college in Ireland. There are two more Intervarsity Events this year, namely the Southerns which the CIT Sailing Club is also hosting in Schull and the Intervarsity Finals in Sligo.
The success of the sailing club is thanks to the support of the CIT sports office, the consistency of the CIT 1sts and the efforts of the club’s committee in organising training, transport and accommodation. The new home of the CIT Sailing Club is the National Maritime College of Ireland. With its own slipway, it is the only college in Ireland and one of the few in Europe with this facility available to them. This makes the NMCI the ideal location for all future events.
