From the 23rd to the 24th of May 2020, sailors and alumni swapped lifejackets for lycra, and were joined by sailors from UCD, TUD, DCU, UCC, CIT, UL, NUIG, QUB and RCSI, as well as family and friends, in attempting the IUSA Round Ireland Run.
Our challenge was to beat the current Round Ireland Race record, which was sailed by a Mod70, by collectively running/walking 704 nautical miles (1303.81km) within 38 hours of our start time. The challenge started at 10:00 on Saturday morning, and by 17:37 on Sunday evening we had beaten the record held by the Mod70 by 6 hours and 30 minutes. But we didn’t stop there! By 10pm on Sunday evening, the official challenge end time, we had collectively clocked over 1600km. The distance was covered by 158 sailors from universities all over the island of Ireland, as well as their friends and families. We even had participants in the UK, Gibraltar and Barbados!
The average distance covered by participants from UL, DCU, UCD, RCSI, TUDublin, UCC, CIT, NUIG, Queens and Trinity Sailing Clubs were counted, logged and entered into an inter-college competition. The winning college of this competition was UL, followed closely by NUIG and UCC Sailing Clubs. Congratulations to UL on this achievement and thank you for your huge support!
We had set an original fundraising target of €2000 for the RNLI and Jigsaw Youth Mental Health Services. Just nine hours in to the challenge on Saturday evening, we had surpassed this target and have currently raised over €4000 for these two charities.
We are incredibly proud of what we have achieved as a club, and as a community, in such difficult times. We truly could not have completed this challenge without the help and support of the entire Irish University Sailing Association (IUSA), as well as our friends and families.
Thank you to everyone who got involved and supported the challenge in any way. We look forward to hopefully seeing you on the water very soon.
Yours in Sailing,
Caoilainn, Hannah, Colin, Sean, Toby, Helen, Tom, Andrew, Issy, Greg, Kate, Emily and Edie.
Committee 2020/21
