Blogs
The Fastnet Rock is a globally recognised and properly appreciated symbol of Maritime Ireland. Yet it is much more than that, to such an extent that we in Ireland are mentally be-numbed by having as part of us this internationally…
RNLI research has shown that over a five-year period there were 1,800 launches by lifeboats in Ireland and the UK to assist people cut off in coastal areas by incoming tides. "Tides are not easily understood by the public," says…
AIB Dublin Bay Sailing Club Prize-Giving Maintains Best of Tradition While Developing New Racing Ideas
9th November 2024 DBSC
On Friday evening (November 8th), the National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire, in the impressively re-purposed Mariners' Church, hosted the Annual Prize-Giving of an internationally significant sailing club which, despite being all of 140 years old, is only ranked fifth…
BIM Chief Executive Caroline Bocquel Outlines Need for "New Vision" for Seafood Sector and Challenges and Opportunities Posed by ORE
7th November 2024 Wavelength Podcast
Early last year, BIM’s newly appointed chief executive Caroline Bocquel told the offshore renewable energy sector that it must improve its communication with the Irish fishing industry. Speaking at the second national seafarers’ conference, she told offshore wind developers that…
ISORA Prize-Giving Celebrates Sailing Success In Increasingly Crowded Programme
2nd November 2024 W M Nixon
Tonight sees the annual Prize Dinner (& Dance, forsooth) of the Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association. It's in the highly sociable setting of the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, where Commodore Peter Sherry and his members and staff will…
Ireland's Golden Jubilee Of Frequent Frostbite Sailing Tells Us Much About 1974
26th October 2024 W M Nixon
It wasn't fully realised at the time, but 1974 was a notably happening year for sailing in Ireland. The new marina was properly in place and up and running in Crosshaven to provide the user-friendly facilities that led, in 1974…
Irish Solo Sailor Tom Dolan's 2024 Figaro Victory: More Than Just a Sporting Success
23rd October 2024 Tom MacSweeney
Figaro winner Tom Dolan, in a review of the past season, says that winning the French race was much more than just a sporting success. " It is the culmination of several years of unremitting work, resilience, and moments of…
The searchlight of international sailing attention is sweeping southward, with focus until now towards the 37th America's Cup's increasing drama at Barcelona. But that focus is taking on an added dimension today, with the start of the 45th Rolex Middle…
Unseen footage of basking sharks filmed from the seabed below their extraordinary mating ritual, and orca whales in pursuit of herring are among images which international marine photographer Nigel Motyer will be showing in Dublin this week. “An Odyssey of…
When the schooner America arrived in the Solent in 1851, she took part in just one race, around the Isle of Wight on Friday August 22nd at the tail-end of that year's Cowes Week. She won. This resulted in the…
America's Cup Troubles: Royal Irish Yacht Club's First Commodore Is To Blame
5th October 2024 W M Nixon
The tension is building in Barcelona as the 37th America's Cup series works its tortuous way towards a dramatic conclusion, with the expenditure of what war historians enjoy describing as "much blood and treasure". But while we might like to…
Keith Hunt has gone from among us with dignity, just 21 days short of his 90th birthday. While we knew him mainly as a man of many and various sailing talents - with 16 Fastnet Races and several dinghy championship…
GPS "Can Be Switched Off At Any Point" and We Are "Closer Now Than Ever" - Former Irish Lights Mariner Capt Harry McClenahan
23rd September 2024 Wavelength Podcast
Satellite navigation systems such as GPS can be switched off at any point, and “we are closer to it now than ever”, Captain Harry McClenahan says. The recently retired master mariner with the Commissioners of Irish Lights says that lighthouses…
Melges 15s Focuses On Dun Laoghaire To Add Fresh Vigour To Dublin Bay This Weekend
21st September 2024 W M Nixon
Dun Laoghaire sailing has been on a hectic upward trajectory in recent days and weeks. Such is the pace, in fact, that it's just as well there are four very capable harbourside clubs to share the effort, and absorb the…
Marie Coyne, the Inishbofin author and artist who led the successful campaign to get 13 skulls of deceased islanders, which had been removed and stored for over 130 years in the Old Anatomy Museum at Trinity College Dublin, returned to…
Comhdháil Oileáin Na hEireann was founded in 1984 "when the Islands were battling poverty, mass emigration, bureaucratic hostility, lack of services and infrastructure and the constant threat of enforced evacuation and clearance," says Rhoda Twombly, Secretary of the organisation, which…
