National Yacht Club

This year ISORA will be celebrating 50 years of Racing in the Irish Sea

Following the 2021 AGM on Saturday 4th December a new schedule of Races has been agreed and can be downloaded here

The web-site is now being updated with to reflect the 2022 Musto ISORA series of races, a balance of Offshore Races and Coastal Races.

The schedule includes a qualifyer for Round Ireland, the Kingstown to Queenstown race and Round Ireland Race.

There is also  Coastal Series in Ireland and also in the UK.

The historic Kingstown to Queenstown Race, jointly hosted by the National Yacht Club, the Royal Cork Yacht Club and the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association (ISORA), will return in 2022 in a modern-day format — reviving the tradition of a race first run in 1860.

The 270-mile offshore race will start in Dun Laoghaire (formerly Kingstown) and finish in Cork Harbour at Cobh (formerly Queenstown) — via Fastnet Rock.

Scheduled to run on the weekend of 1 July 2022, the participating fleet will have plenty of time to arrive in Cork ahead of the racing and festivities of Volvo Cork Week 2022.

In 1860 the first ever ocean yacht race in the United Kingdom was held from Kingstown (Now Dun Laoghaire) to Queenstown (Now Cobh). It is reported that the winner of the race was paid a prize of £15 at the time and all competing boat got a bursary of 10/6 each. The winner of the first race was a Schooner Kingfisher owned by Cooper Penrose Esq. The race was held on the 14th of July 1860 and had sixteen boats racing.

This year, the winning boat will be awarded a first prize of a cheque for €15 mounted and framed, made out by the Royal Cork Yacht Club the oldest yacht club in the world to the winner of the oldest ocean yacht race in United Kingdom.