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A Sigma 33 One Design keelboat racing on Dublin Bay Photo: AfloatA Sigma 33 One Design keelboat racing on Dublin Bay Photo: Afloat

Sailing in Ireland. Sailors, Yachting, Clubs, Regattas
John (Johnny) Robinson RIP
It is with deep sadness that we heard of Johnny Robinson's passing on Thursday at the age of 87. He had been involved with Clontarf Yacht and Boat Club for over 70 years and was its longest-serving member. Johnny was known…
The WOW festival is an opportunity for women to try a variety of different activities on the water within a supportive environment and a chance to meet new friends whilst developing skills
This year’s Women on Water Festival will be held at the Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club at Cultra on the south side of Belfast Lough near Holywood. The date is 12th May. This event, hosted by the RYANI is…
Testing conditions. In the Irish Intervarsities Keelboat Champs at Howth in the final weekend of March, UCC Captain Michael O’Suillebhain has shown that he has maintained the skills that got him onto he podium in the J/24 Euros at the same venue
It’s more than 18 months now since Michael O’Suillebhain did some skilled helming to bring Kinsale YC’s J/24 Kinsailor onto the podium in the J/24 Europeans at Howth. But his skills were as sharp as ever as he led the…
Never mind the weather – UCD’s successful Intervarsity Dinghy Squad at Schull were Jamie McMahon, Leonie Judge, William Lacy, Tom Higgins, Peter Fagan, and Cian Lynch
The annual moveable feast that is the Irish Universities Annual Dinghy Team Challenge is not something to be undertaken lightly, as it aims to draw in more than 160 college sailors to some attractive venue that has to provide good…
March 2024 Sailor of the Month Rose Michael accepting yet another significant cheque on behalf of the lifeboats, this time from Cormac Lowth representing the annual “All In A Row” multi-boat event on Dublin’s River Liffey
In the third weekend of March, two nautical gatherings in the Cork area were painlessly relieved of around €5,000 for Irish lifeboats, with much of the background work to ensure that this went through smoothly being seen to by longtime…
Paul O'Higgins' championship-winning JPK10.80 Rockabill VI from the Royal Irish Yacht Club is confirmed for the first ISORA Coastal Series Race from Dun Laoghaire on April 6th
Paul O'Higgins' championship-winning JPK10.80 Rockabill VI from the Royal Irish Yacht Club will be challenged by a smaller JPK 10.30 when the 2024 ISORA Viking Marine Coastal Series gets underway next Saturday morning at Dun Laoghaire Harbour. Coquine, a brand new…
GBR's Micky Beckett from Wales is gunning for a third ILCA 7 title at the Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca
After nearly two weeks of strong winds and big seas that have prevailed for the hundreds of teams and Olympic-class sailors who have been training on Mallorca’s Bay of Palma, competitors at the 53 Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca look set…
Big breeze, big skies, changeable weather - classic late March weather for the Intervarsity Keelboat Championship 2024 at Howth
Always having the Friday and Saturday of the last weekend of March as the "fixed fixture" for your annual event is usually guaranteed to provide lively conditions and Howth YC's Scorie Walls's regular yearly staging of the University Keelboats team…
HYC Spring Warmers
Attention all keelboat sailors: Howth Yacht Club is running a one-day spring warmers event on Saturday 27 April for Cruiser Classes 1, 2, 3 and J80s. The club says this is a perfect opportunity to dust down the cobwebs and…
Windsurfing and wing instruction at Newtownards Sailing Club on Sunday 24 March
More than 60 sailors, instructors and centre principals from across Northern Ireland gathered at Strangford Lough Yacht Club and Newtownards Sailing Club for a recent weekend of RYANI training. The training day and windsurfing clinic allowed for all participants to…
Gavin Hydes (CEO of Porsche Centre Dublin), Neil Murphy (Commodore Howth Yacht Club), and Dave Cullen (Race Director, Wave Regatta), with friends at the announcement of the Porsche sponsorship of Howth’s Wave Regatta 2024
Porsche Centre Dublin, renowned for their commitment to excellence and luxury, will take centre stage as the headline sponsors for Howth Yacht Club’s Wave Regatta, scheduled from May 24th to 26th, 2024. Their support underscores the significance of this event…
Lighter winds for a race start on day two of the RORC Easter Challenge Day Two at Cowes
It was all change on Saturday, the second day of the 2024 RORC Easter Challenge. The big breeze on the first day had moderated to a light southerly of about ten knots, and Spring sunshine had broken through the clouds.…
The Anú Pictures documentary 'The Camino Voyage' is on TG4 at 21.20 tonight, Easter Saturday
“The Camino Voyage”, the award-winning documentary on a naomhóg journey by sea from Ireland to northern Spain, will be broadcast again on TG4 tonight (Saturday, March 30) Dónal Ó Ceilleachair’s film followed the late poet Danny Sheehy, artist Liam Holden,…
Claud Monet’s impression of the August 1900 Sailing Olympics at Le Havre. This was the first modern Olympic Sailing event ever completed on salt water, and was the second stage of a two-part regatta in which Part 1 had been raced on the River Seine near Paris in May. A sailing event had been scheduled for the first modern Olympiad at Athens in 1896, but persistent gales on the Aegean Sea made its staging impossible. Image Courtesy MM
Olympians are different from you and me. In the final analysis, that’s what being Olympian is all about. For whether we like it or not, the vivid clarity of an Olympic medal is one of the few ways that sailing…
Elaine again, (GBR 1250N) at the IRC Three start on day one of the 2024 RORC Easter Challenge on the Solent
The 2024 RORC Easter Challenge got underway in ‘sporty’ conditions on Good Friday with strong gusty conditions in the Eastern Solent. The first European fixture of the Royal Ocean Racing Club 2024 programme is billed as a training regatta with…
First-place winners in each class of the 'March Hare' regatta with Malahide Yacht Club Commodore Margaret Faye and sponsor, Alan Early of Airport Driving School
Racing was like playing 'snakes and ladders' as wind shifts made Malahide Yacht Club's season-opening 'March Hare' regatta an interesting but challenging event. Postponed by 24 hours from the planned Saturday due to forecast strong winds, the event took place…

How to sail, sailing clubs and sailing boats plus news on the wide range of sailing events on Irish waters forms the backbone of Afloat's sailing coverage.

We aim to encompass the widest range of activities undertaken on Irish lakes, rivers and coastal waters. This page describes those sailing activites in more detail and provides links and breakdowns of what you can expect from our sailing pages. We aim to bring jargon free reports separated in to popular categories to promote the sport of sailing in Ireland.

The packed 2013 sailing season sees the usual regular summer leagues and there are regular weekly race reports from Dublin Bay Sailing Club, Howth and Cork Harbour on Afloat.ie. This season and last also featured an array of top class events coming to these shores. Each year there is ICRA's Cruiser Nationals starts and every other year the Round Ireland Yacht Race starts and ends in Wicklow and all this action before July. Crosshaven's Cork Week kicks off on in early July every other year. in 2012 Ireland hosted some big international events too,  the ISAF Youth Worlds in Dun Laoghaire and in August the Tall Ships Race sailed into Dublin on its final leg. In that year the Dragon Gold Cup set sail in Kinsale in too.

2013 is also packed with Kinsale hosting the IFDS diabled world sailing championships in Kinsale and the same port is also hosting the Sovereign's Cup. The action moves to the east coast in July with the staging of the country's biggest regatta, the Volvo Dun Laoghaire regatta from July 11.

Our coverage though is not restricted to the Republic of Ireland but encompasses Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Irish Sea area too. In this section you'll find information on the Irish Sailing Association and Irish sailors. There's sailing reports on regattas, racing, training, cruising, dinghies and keelboat classes, windsurfers, disabled sailing, sailing cruisers, Olympic sailing and Tall Ships sections plus youth sailing, match racing and team racing coverage too.

Sailing Club News

There is a network of over 70 sailing clubs in Ireland and we invite all clubs to submit details of their activities for inclusion in our daily website updates. There are dedicated sections given over to the big Irish clubs such as  the waterfront clubs in Dun Laoghaire; Dublin Bay Sailing Club, the Royal Saint George Yacht Club,  the Royal Irish Yacht Club and the National Yacht Club. In Munster we regularly feature the work of Kinsale Yacht Club and Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven.  Abroad Irish sailors compete in Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) racing in the UK and this club is covered too. Click here for Afloat's full list of sailing club information. We are keen to increase our coverage on the network of clubs from around the coast so if you would like to send us news and views of a local interest please let us have it by sending an email to [email protected]

Sailing Boats and Classes

Over 20 active dinghy and one design classes race in Irish waters and fleet sizes range from just a dozen or so right up to over 100 boats in the case of some of the biggest classes such as the Laser or Optimist dinghies for national and regional championships. Afloat has dedicated pages for each class: Dragons, Etchells, Fireball, Flying Fifteen, GP14, J24's, J80's, Laser, Sigma 33, RS Sailing, Star, Squibs, TopperMirror, Mermaids, National 18, Optimist, Puppeteers, SB3's, and Wayfarers. For more resources on Irish classes go to our dedicated sailing classes page.

The big boat scene represents up to 60% of the sail boat racing in these waters and Afloat carries updates from the Irish Cruiser Racer Association (ICRA), the body responsible for administering cruiser racing in Ireland and the popular annual ICRA National Championships. In 2010 an Irish team won the RORC Commodore's Cup putting Irish cruiser racing at an all time high. Popular cruiser fleets in Ireland are raced right around the coast but naturally the biggest fleets are in the biggest sailing centres in Cork Harbour and Dublin Bay. Cruisers race from a modest 20 feet or so right up to 50'. Racing is typically divided in to Cruisers Zero, Cruisers One, Cruisers Two, Cruisers Three and Cruisers Four. A current trend over the past few seasons has been the introduction of a White Sail division that is attracting big fleets.

Traditionally sailing in northern Europe and Ireland used to occur only in some months but now thanks to the advent of a network of marinas around the coast (and some would say milder winters) there are a number of popular winter leagues running right over the Christmas and winter periods.

Sailing Events

Punching well above its weight Irish sailing has staged some of the world's top events including the Volvo Ocean Race Galway Stopover, Tall Ships visits as well as dozens of class world and European Championships including the Laser Worlds, the Fireball Worlds in both Dun Laoghaire and Sligo.

Some of these events are no longer pure sailing regattas and have become major public maritime festivals some are the biggest of all public staged events. In the past few seasons Ireland has hosted events such as La Solitaire du Figaro and the ISAF Dublin Bay 2012 Youth Worlds.

There is a lively domestic racing scene for both inshore and offshore sailing. A national sailing calendar of summer fixtures is published annually and it includes old favorites such as Sovereign's Cup, Calves Week, Dun Laoghaire to Dingle, All Ireland Sailing Championships as well as new events with international appeal such as the Round Britain and Ireland Race and the Clipper Round the World Race, both of which have visited Ireland.

The bulk of the work on running events though is carried out by the network of sailing clubs around the coast and this is mostly a voluntary effort by people committed to the sport of sailing. For example Wicklow Sailing Club's Round Ireland yacht race run in association with the Royal Ocean Racing Club has been operating for over 30 years. Similarly the international Cork Week regatta has attracted over 500 boats in past editions and has also been running for over 30 years.  In recent years Dublin Bay has revived its own regatta called Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta and can claim to be the country's biggest event with over 550 boats entered in 2009.

On the international stage Afloat carries news of Irish and UK interest on Olympics 2012, Sydney to Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, Cowes Week and the Fastnet Race.

We're always aiming to build on our sailing content. We're keen to build on areas such as online guides on learning to sail in Irish sailing schools, navigation and sailing holidays. If you have ideas for our pages we'd love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected]