AS NUMBERS of Irish sailors continue to flock towards bigger yachts in the main sailing season of April to October, next weekend will see the annual gathering of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association in Athlone where the stage will be set for the 2009 season. As a non-Commodore's Cup year, club racing will once again be to the fore.

Now entering its seventh year, the association has become the focus for the largest division of the sport in Ireland, that of handicapped racing boats and numbers of certificates under both IRC and ECHO systems continue to rise indicating this growth. That augurs well for the annual championships in mid-June while it also fulfils a long-standing promise to the strengthening western seaboard fleets to hold the series on the Atlantic Ocean: Fenit Sailing Club in Co Kerry is the venue. Breaking the traditional Cork-Dublin axis of influence on the sport has been a long time in the making but organisers hope that careful timing of the event may overcome any resistance to the more distant venue.

Cork and Galway clubs will be running feeder races to the ICRA Championships which have also been timed to match the Dún Laoghaire to Dingle Race that can be used as a competitive delivery passage as there is likely to be a two-handed division in the race for the first time. However, the association may have to resort to its own resources unless a replacement sponsor can be found after Saab ended its five-year programme.

But the rise in numbers participating is positive news for the ICRA Commodore Fintan Cairns. "What's very encouraging is that in the Viking Marine Turkey Shoot (Dún Laoghaire winter series) 19 or 20 brand new boats that haven't raced before are taking part," he told The Irish Times yesterday. According to Cairns, the secret is "If you give people what they want - good racing - then you get them out."

Among the items on ICRA's agm on November 29th will be guidelines for best practice that will be circularised to all clubs and event organisers concerning handicapping systems and especially in the light of the growing "White Sails" phenomenon.

Although ICRA holds the internationally-used IRC system as the basis for deciding its annual champions, the Irish-devised ECHO performance-based system is also promoted and Cairns points to the recommendation in the IRC Yearbook that such a system be used as it encourages more participants.