ILCA UK Chair blog #121

Jan 20

A quick plug for our first regatta in the new Regional Youth series at Datchet on 1st/2nd February. At this series we are encouraging all sailors but especially less experienced sailors to come and experience one design ILCA racing in a relaxed enviornment. The reservoir is full, we have a class coach there to support you and we are trialing trackers!

I wanted to return to a regular theme in this blog around female participation. In Paris 2024 and also Tokyo 2020 we had equal numbers of men and women in the ILCA7 and ILCA6 fleets (for a little of the history of the ILCA6 in the Olympics see blog #26 ) with also an increased focus on having more women as race officials, jurors and team managers / coaches at the Olympic Games. It is only right that women are given the same opportunity as men to do these roles if they want. And in ILCA UK we have been working hard on this and two years ago we launched our survey on this subject, receiving 108 responses.

Since then, we have set-up a WAG (women and girls) sub-committee led by Fiona Attwell. We have worked to ensure all write-ups on our events and our prize-givings feature both men and women prominently (as these are done by volunteers we are not always perfect in this regard). The survey found that women want to race with men most of the time, but not always and we have run separate racing for women at one of our events in both the ILCA4s and ILCA6s. Last July we ran the first Women’s ILCA Regatta at Rutland (with very positive feedback – video here ILCA UK Women’s Regatta video) and this is scheduled again in June 2025.

We have also encouraged more women - youth, seniors and masters - to sail in our open ILCA4 fleet and at a masters event last year we had a £10 entry fee to encourage that. However numbers of women at masters events (in ILCA4 and ILCA6) remain too low and we have so far not figured out how to address this. More excitedly the ILCA Women coaching day at Queen Mary was a huge success ILCA Women's Coaching Day at Queen Mary Sailing Club and a repeat in now scheduled in March.

We have also published our Misconduct policy based on World Sailing interpretation of Rule 69 (misconduct). This allows reports to be made to the protest committee for a wide range of poor behaviour. Unlike in the past where only serious misconduct was heard under rule, the protest committee is now able to give a range a penalties, starting from a verbal warning. As there remains (some) bullying and misogynistic behaviour in ILCA racing, from club racing through to National events, and as this has no place in our class or sport, I would encourage you to report it to the protest committee where observed.

ILCA UK would like to see more women and also younger race officials, jurors and coaches so if you are interested please let me know (or Ellie or any other committee member). For jurors we can offer development opportunities at our events and the support of the RYA. We are working on a development pathway for women coaches and can offer opportunities as race officials, where we have already made steady progress.

ILCA UK Events

You can now renew your membership for 2025. Not a member yet? JOIN NOW

See our calendar for training and also our first Youth Series event at Datchet on 1st/ 2nd February.

ILCA UK training - all remaining training for winter/spring is now open. BOOK here

Other news

ILCA UK - Dinghy Show Information, including Discount code!

RYA Wales new ILCAs

Inlands photos here

Noble Marine ILCA UK ILCA 6 Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Noble Marine ILCA UK ILCA 4 Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

Noble Marine ILCA 7 ILCA UK Inland Championships at Grafham Water Sailing Club

ILCA Qualifier 6 WPNSA Day 2 October 2024 – no racing but loads of photos here and here