ILCA UK Chair Blog #110

Written By Mark Lyttle

Making the ILCA attractive to a wide and diverse group of sailors helps participation at all levels and allows us the “buck the trend” with consistently strong numbers sailing our class at all levels.

This weekend showed that in operation. While hundreds of ILCA sailors were club racing in lots of clubs around the country (even if the wind was a bit light), at Weymouth we had 175 sailors across all three rigs in our final “qualifier” of the year, the second weekend in a row with over 170 sailors. In the ILCA6 we had Hannah Snellgrove, fresh from Paris 24, heading a 83 strong fleet of British Sailing Team and other top sailors, together with many experienced and some first-time youth sailors. The ILCA7 was even more stacked with two medal race sailors from Paris (Micky Beckett and Lorenzo) and Tokyo Olympic rep Elliot Hanson. It was of course disappointing we didn’t get to race despite best efforts from the race officer.

As an aside, we are considering changing the name of these events from “qualifier” as there is a feeling this gives sailors the wrong impression. These are National open meetings with high quality race management and a fleet of sailors wanting high level competition or club sailors aspiring to improve their sailing to the next level. While they serve as qualification for international events, if only rarely needed, for most sailors this comes well down the list of reasons they are sailing.

Meanwhile in Rutland, over 70 Masters were competing at the Masters Inland Championships, with the usual age span - some Apprentices through to some Legends (over 75!!). It says something that we have over 240 sailors competing in October in two ILCA UK events at the same time. 

At Queen Mary we had 24 women doing a coaching / training weekend. By all accounts it was well received with plans for another early event in 2025. Well done to Jonathan Stirling for organising. 

I also wanted to provide some feedback from the survey on the 2024 Nationals, which has been included in RYA Event of Year. I have not yet heard whether we were finalists but below is part of our submission. Overall the feedback from the survey was very positive with a number of comments on things to improve, although there was no consistent overall trend around these. Of course many thanks to our great volunteers who continue to make our class special.  

Why do you believe this event should be RYA Event of the Year?

Over the last couple of years ILCA UK have focussed on turning our National Championship into a “festival of sailing”, attracting sailors of all levels,ages and regions to the event with high quality racing combined with lots of onshore activities and social events. This formula has worked with over 250 entries coming to WPNSA from 12th to 17th August this year across our three rigs of ILCA4, ILCA6 and ILCA7.

We provided world class racing at 2012 Olympic venue on two separaterace courses, with most days out in Weymouth Bay. This involved mobilising two safety teams of 16 RIBs with 216 days of volunteer time.

This effort allowed us to run racing on one day with winds gusting up to 30 knots by racing in the harbour and rotating during the day the starts/racing across the three rigs.

As well as daily briefings on local conditions, we had daily morning race clinics from top sailors from the British Sailing Team, ensuring every sailor felt welcome. They covered various topics from set up/rigging to boat speed down wind, from pre-race strategy to wave technique. It was a fantastic opportunity to listen to our best sailors, see what they do differently, and ask them those questions. This was combined with a mentor/mentee scheme which was a great success and a super way to meet fellow sailors and get some sailing tips and encouragement.

Each day we had an official photographer on the water and thousands of high-quality photos have been provided free to sailors as well as used in post-event reports.

Ashore, the class worked with WPNSA to provide a sailor’s hub with sponsor tents, a “grass area” and stage with chillout zone including table football and table tennis. The class led efforts to share these resources with the Toppers and Waszp in their championships at WPNSA before and after ours.

We used this stage for daily briefings but also for our daily prize draw with the support of our sponsors where sailors and volunteers could win prizes. This culminated on the penultimate evening when Micky Beckett, ILCA7/Team GB representative at the Paris Olympics, came and talked to the sailors and drew the prize of a brand new ILCA, provided by Ovington, which went to a club to help stimulate sailing at grassroots level.

Much of this was made possible by our great sponsors (Noble Marine, Ovington, Rooster, Sailingfast, Tideway Wealth, Southeast Sailboats and Fernhurst Books) with the class working closely with them to ensure we promoted and encouraged club sailors at our event by providing recognition and support throughout the fleet through spot prizes. We also sold official event merchandise but every sailor also got a free championship T-shirt.

After sailing each day, there was a snack and we also provided a welcome Pizza night the first evening and BBQ night in the entry fee. This was combined with entertainment every evening including a DJ on BBQ night.

Describe your main successes around inclusion, inspiration, engagement, connections, influence, and sustainability.

Our festival of sailing aims to be inclusive. Our youngest competitor was 13, our oldest was 72. We had many club sailors at their first championships competing alongside British Sailing Team sailors. All rigs and age categories had top three prizes for both men and women with the first overall in the ILCA6 won by Matilda Nicholls of the British Sailing Team. Driving higher women participation in the class is a big priority and why we ran a ILCA Women’s regatta this year at Rutland. We want all three rigs, ILCA4, ILCA6 and ILCA7 at our events so younger sailors interact with older sailors and also allow family groups to compete in the same championship. Building an ILCA community is important to us and we feel we are uniquely positioned to bring Olympic level sailing together with club and youth sailing, inspiring all sailors and boosting participation.

In our post-event survey, over 94% of respondents thought the event organisation was excellent or very good. We also work hard to promote our championship with a dedicated website and a special logo for the event which was used in our championship mug.

At each of our daily prize draws sailors had the opportunity to question the day's winners. With our Mentor/Mentee Scheme sailors were be able to meet their mentor before the start of the event and there were prizes awarded for most improved Mentee/Mentor pairing. The overall purpose was to enable those new to class/fleet/event or less confident sailors enjoy our events and grow in confidence as well as to empower more experienced sailors to mentor effectively, a transferable skill.

We ran events for non-sailors to make them feel included. An example was the Weymouth Chaser. Once sailors launched, we had a 5k handicap race. Promoted as Why just sit on shore? Go for a run or volunteer or both!

Our volunteer base is something to be proud of. As well as the safety team mentioned above, we had another 42 days of volunteer time on tally, registration, beach and bridge.

Mark Lyttle
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