Blogs
The new Chief Executive of the Marine Institute says that it is essential that there is good public understanding of the importance of the sea. The Institute is the national agency responsible for maritime research, technology development and innovation policy.…
The accepted and popular shapes of boats and yachts in different ages changes so much that you’d be forgiven for thinking that their functions also change completely to suit the requirements of each new era. Of course, design development, measurement…
One-by-one they came in this week – cancellations of planned events. The Royal Cork’s 300th celebrations. I commiserated with the club’s Admiral, Colin Morehead. A tough decision for him in his first few months in office. Cork Week had to…
The Covid-19-related cancellation of the pillar events planned for July in the Royal Cork Yacht Club’s Tricentenary Celebrations has had an inexorable inevitability about it for the last ten days and more. But a decision of such magnitude needed to…
A “squib” I was told when first shown one of these boats by its owner, is “an explosive boat. Several of them were riding nicely on the rippling water at Kinsale Marina that day two years ago when it was…
The potent Dun Laoghaire-based JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI may now have four very busy seasons – both inshore and offshore - in her sailing CV. But the years have not dulled her performance and competitiveness, and in 2019 she had…
When a country is brooding under the gloom of a developing and lethal global pandemic, you’d have thought that something mildly light-hearted such as the weekend’s Sailing on Saturday creation of a virtual launch party at the Royal Irish Yacht…
What motivates a man to buy a wreck over a hundred years old and decide that he can repair her? Why bother and was he ‘mad’ to think of doing so? My Podcast this week is with a man who…
Round Ireland Yacht Race 2020 - Virtual Launch Party Goes Ahead at Royal Irish YC
13th March 2020 RORC There’s a rumour going around about the cancellation of this week’s traditional Dublin launch in the Royal Irish Yacht Club of the biennial SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race, due to start from Wicklow Sailing Club on June 20th. The rumour…
This week International Women’s Day is demanding a lot of attention worldwide. In the shipping industry, a campaign has been launched in the UK to achieve ‘gender balance in the industry’. Here in Ireland, sailing ladies have their WOW group…
Launch of New Jeanneau Sun Fast 3300 by MGM Boats Will Make Irish Sailing Fun Again
6th March 2020 MGM Boats We were having one of those brainstorming discussions the other day about how best to promote sailing in Ireland, when some still small voice suggested that we were going at the challenge entirely the wrong way. We were thinking in…
Cork Harbour has lost a sailing club, which is actually good news for the sport. If that seems questionable statement, it is not because it brings back together the members of Cove Sailing Club and the Great Island Sailing Club,…
Keeping Ireland’s Sailing & Boating Communities in Good Health is Always Work in Progress
28th February 2020 W M Nixon This weekend two years ago, Storm Emma was sweeping Ireland, with onshore hurricane-force winds attacking much of the East Coast and wrecking a shed on Howth’s East Pier where, for decades, boats of the 1898-founded Howth Seventeen Foot class had…
I learned my sailing crewing aboard a National 18 in Cork Harbour. That opportunity came through an adult sailing course because it was in my late 20s that I gained access to the sport. Back then was not a time…
The Irish Cruising Club celebrated the completion of its successful 90th year at its Annual General Meeting in the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire last night and saw a significant change of the watch with Stanton Adair of Belfast…
There are many definitions and a lot of disagreement about that. There is no disagreement, though, about how they look on the water amongst the boating fraternity. As put to me by that great authority on historic boats, Hal Sisk…
