Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
The impression conveyed in the image above of good-humoured sport afloat at the first regatta from the new harbour of Kingstown on July 22nd 1828 is so lively that today we easily forgive the relatively unskilled work of the artist,…
On Sunday, August 29th 1971, a group of offshore devotees who had campaigned the previous day's annual cross-channel Abersoch-Howth Race for the James C Eadie Cup gathered in the bar of Howth Yacht Club and gave some purpose to their…
You know how it is. You're wondering if the slightly odd flavour of the evening cuppa is a hint of the imminence of the C-Monster's indicator of taste-loss. All this, too, just as it's increasingly clear that your already-proposed personal…
Ireland's Conor O'Brien was the first amateur skipper to circumnavigate the globe by the classic sailing ship route south of the great Capes, running down his easting in the big winds of the Great Southern Ocean which blow unhindered round…
When the "low black schooner" America won what was to become an historic race around the Isle of Wight on Friday 22nd August 1851 from a small fleet of varied English yachts, thereby winning a silver ewer which was eventually…
The Irish Cruising Club has been producing a printed Annual collating its members doings afloat and ashore through logs and narratives for ninety years now. And while these days this substantial collection is in circulation before Christmas as a matter…
The Figaro Solo was arguably the peak in sailing competition – both inshore and offshore – in Europe during 2020. In a truncated and contorted season, somehow the crème de la creme of international solo sailing were guided into a…
In these long-lived times, a Silver Jubilee is not what it used to be in an era when Golden Jubilees, Centenaries, Tricentenaries and whatever you're having yourself are cascading around us in an almost continuous nostalgia-fest. Nevertheless the healthy Quarter…
Dublin and its Port. The City and the Sea. The Culture and the Commerce. The Buzz and the Business. The sense of real working and creative life, with the romance of the ocean and the hint of salty far horizons,…
At one stage last Autumn, it looked for a week or two as though Irish venues might be hosting no less than five World Championships for dinghy classes during the three week period between the July 24th and August 14th…
It's getting to be like a game of skittles in the planned lineup of high-profile 2021 events which everybody - way back in the dark depths of earlier pandemic lockdowns – thought would surely come to pass in the remote…
For sure, the pandemic-plagued year of 2020 - with its stop-start framework of activity afloat and ashore - was something beyond most sailors' experience. Yet ours is nothing if not a can-do sport. And while some sailing enthusiasts – particularly…
Dublin Bay Sailing Club's recognition today as the Mitsubishi Motors "Sailing Club of the Year" 2021 on the strength of achieving a remarkably full programme in 2020 when Pandemic Regulations permitted is well merited. Yet it's only the second time…
Our header photo is one whose use had not been anticipated for at least another month, and hopefully not at all. For it was optimistically expected that by late January, we'd have evidence the vaccines were beginning to work, with…
In normal times, the yearly Irish sailing fixtures list is a reasonably harmonious programme based around annual or biennial pillar events of various types and sizes, an ongoing succession of regattas and championships which slot together in a reasonably meaningful…
It would be needlessly painful to look back at the Afloat.ie features of a year and more ago anticipating the coming sailing season of 2020. They exuded optimism, anticipation, energy and enthusiasm for the approaching twelve months. They looked forward…