This year has been an extremely busy year for ICRA and Cruiser racing with the D2D race, K2Q race, Round Ireland, Cork Week, ISORA, SCORA, WIORA and everything in between. ECHO ratings form an important part of all of these events.

You might be interested to know, that in February of this year, a new steering group was formed in Irish Sailing to support these events. This group is called the Ratings and Handicapping Steering Group and they were formed to support Irish Sailing’s Racing Department with the development and implementation of rating and handicapping systems in Ireland.

The group is made up of volunteers Liam Lynch as the Chair, Dara Totterdell, Denis Kiely, Colin McMullen Ian Bowring and Sarah-Louise Rossiter of Irish Sailing in attendance. Their mission, along with developing and working with PY ratings (Portsmouth Yardstick) and a watching brief on other handicap systems coming down the line, is to promote ECHO as an important element of club and regatta racing and supporting these activities in clubs. To try to explain how ECHO works, the group have written a document that best explains how is designed, how it came about, how it works, the different types of ECHO handicap and how it is calculated.

See the ECHO GUIDE FOR CLUBS HERE

This and more information about ECHO and IRC ratings can be found here: https://www.sailing.ie/Racing/Handicapping