Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Here in the Sailing on Saturday verbiage production complex in a hidden bunker under a nameless hill off an un-named coast of Ireland, all this maundering-on about a gloomy future for sailing in general and Irish sailing, in particular, passes…

The shortage of young sailors on racing boats is a universal problem. That is the opinion of Andy Anderson, President of the International Council of Yacht Clubs. It is one of the issues which clubs need to deal with in…

Olympian and Sailing Coach Mark Mansfield runs through the options available for an owner looking to buy a new boat for racing in the 30 to 50-foot range and picks his top 15 from the market Having sailed in numerous…

Only in Ireland could it be like this. We hear that of many things in this curious island of ours. But the varying sailing, location and personal backgrounds of the sixteen helmspersons competing in this weekend’s All-Ireland Helmsmans Championship at…

My Podcast this week is an interview with the Chief Executive of Irish Sailing, Harry Hermon, in which he discusses a decline in yacht ownership, lifestyle changes which have reduced the time people can give to organised club sailing, the…

The Champion of our Sailing Champions? Ireland first ran with the idea 72 years ago. And while other countries have since come up with their own versions with varying levels of success which have sometimes reduced annually until fading away,…

“Twenty-five individuals formed the Water Club of Cork on Haulbowline Island, now the RCYC, in 1720. One yacht club with 25 members,” says the Royal Cork Yacht Club’s present Admiral, Pat Farnan. “There are now thousands across the globe whose…

In 1828, when the recently re-named and still only semi-finished harbour of Kingstown on Dublin Bay staged its first regatta, it certainly gave an indication of the transformed place’s potential for waterborne sport. Yet it was not until 1831 that…

I won’t be challenging Hal Sisk’s confident declaration that he is Chairman of “the world’s oldest cruiser-racer class!” His offer to anyone to challenge him sounded across Kilrush Boatyard to where I had driven over 400 kilometres from Cork to…

Olympic helmsman Mark Mansfield, who is now a sailing coach, provides some sailor-focused thoughts for Race Officers Over the past few years, I have been competing in various sailing events throughout Ireland, the UK, Europe and the USA. Very often…

Howth Yacht Club has a fresh buzz to it these days, an electrical charge which - if they could somehow package, market and sell it at its true value - would surely provide a handy addition to club revenues. But…

This will be an exceptionally busy sailing weekend in Cork Harbour. Cork Dinghy Fest, the Cobh-to-Blackrock Race, the National 18s Championships, the Irish Multihull Championships, the RS 200, 400 and Feva Nationals, the Mirror Southerns, the 29er Southerns and the…

Mark Twain used to say that you should never get into a row with anyone who buys ink by the barrel. But last weekend The Irish Times, our national Paper of Record, ran a Weekend Review feature about the problematical…

Ardmore is a lovely village on the Waterford coastline, not far from Youghal. It’s a seaside resort and was once a busy fishing village, though that period has largely passed. The meaning of its name in Irish is ‘Great Height’…

Irish Olympic helmsman Mark Mansfield picks his big (and smaller) events coming up for the Irish cruiser classes in 2020 The 2019 season is only just coming towards its end and already owners and crew are looking ahead at what…

Our header photo this week may not be the greatest in terms of clarity and technical brilliance, let alone jaw-dropping drama writes W M Nixon. But it tells us much about our peculiar sport of racing under sail, that two…