Royal Cork’s ILCA 6 Laser fleet competing at the European Youth championships at Ballyholme YC
The excitement has been building for a while at Ballyholme YC and the racing begins on Monday next, July 29th for six days for the ILCA 6/Radial class. An incredible three hundred and sixty eight ILCA 6s will line up to compete with one hundred and fourteen girls and two hundred and fifty four boys. The Irish fleet consists of sixteen girls and twenty six boys with eight sailors from Royal Cork.
On the previous occasion twenty years ago when the European Youths was held at Ballyholme in 2004, it was a Royal Cork Sailor, George Kingston who won the championships. 
This year there we have Bella Waterman, Megan O’Sullivan, Sean O’Herlihy, Shane Collins, Dara Jenkins, Michael Doherty, Cormac Byrne and Andrew Kingston representing Royal Cork. Andrew has been training in Ballyholme as part of the ISA ILCA 6 academy team since May and Cormac has recently started sailing with the academy.
As well as our competitors, we have several members working at the event including Ed Rice helping out on boat measurement from Friday to Sunday. Chmarine have a van onsite with Conor Horgan and Jack Young providing their advice on equipment.
It is a fantastic opportunity for our sailors with the event relatively local in a club where most have sailed a number of events. There is an amazing selection of countries with twenty five european countries in the girls event and visitors from US, Canada, Australi, Japan and New Zealand.
In the boys event, there are visitors from Antigua, Bermuda, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Hong Kong, Mexico, Qatar, Singapore, Thailand, US, Australia, Canada.
We do hope that they have been practising in their ice baths for the courses that will be at the edge of the cool Belfast Lough.
Racing is planned for six days with two races per day, starting on Monday.
All details and results can be followed on this link. https://2024-ilca6youth.eurilca-europeans.org/
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