Blogs
ILCA Worlds Put Dún Laoghaire's Watersports Campus Plans to the Test
31st August 2026 ILCA Worlds 2026
“Probably the biggest collection of top sailors ever to have raced in Ireland” is how International Laser Class Association (ILCA) president Mark Lyttle describes the activity in Dublin Bay over the past week. Since the ILCA Men’s World Championships opened…
The 50-year-old former fishing vessel MV KATE is due to leave Kinsale Fisheries Pier on Sunday afternoon, bound for Gaza in an attempt to breach the Israeli naval blockade and deliver relief supplies to Palestinians. Previous attempts by vessels taking…
We all know that drink was invented to stop the Irish ruling the world. But on the same theme, the Irish sailing community has always quietly nurtured the thought that if our usual weather could just be somehow modified to…
Sailing in West Cork for the past couple of weeks and more seems to have been elevated onto a new plane of meaning and enjoyment, with events around the traditional Baltimore Regatta on the Bank Holiday weekend (July 31st-August 2nd)…
Kerry solo sailor Pat Lawless will leave Dingle on Monday afternoon bound for France as he begins the final stage of his preparations for the 2026 Golden Globe Race. Lawless must arrive at Les Sables-d'Olonne by 10 August to complete…
As the proposed 2026 international sailing programme began to move from the possible though the probable to the completely definite stages, the Research Unit here in the Sailing on Saturday Production Facility began to be concerned that planned big sailing…
With much of humanity still stunned in the sensory overload of the post-FIFA World Cup withdrawal symptoms, our ILCA sailors at home are benefitting from a dose of reality with a fleet of a hundred and more lined up for…
All Eyes Increasingly Towards Dun Laoghaire’s World Major As 2026 Season Progresses Through Second Half
18th July 2026 W M Nixon
The 2026 ILCA 7 Worlds in Dublin Bay from 23rd to 30th August, co-hosted by the National Yacht Club and Royal St George YC of Dun Laoghaire is by all official ratings the most important sailing event in Ireland this year. Sailing being…
The sense of land and sea interacting dynamically always seems much stronger around Cork Harbour than in most other places in Ireland, and never more so than in Cork Week with the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven. There, the…
Time was when a disagreement arose about some ancient disputed event between people from England and those from Ireland, you could only expect two conclusions from the heat of the argument. Firstly, if our friends from across the water were…
It’s Regatta Time in Ireland, with Competing, Haggling and Selling at Retail
27th June 2026 Royal Irish Yacht Club
It’s currently Regatta Time in a big way in Ireland at the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire and the Bangor clubs on Belfast Lough, with high stakes in terms of appropriate weather and the provision of good sailing. As…
Ireland’s Women Sailors Setting the Summertime Pace In Dublin Bay
13th June 2026 Royal Irish Yacht Club
The Royal Irish Yacht Club is building up to the beginning of its many and varied 195th Anniversary events in a week’s time, celebrating life afloat and ashore with Winifred Kelliher as the club’s first woman Commodore. Further along the…
In the secret world of sailing, we readily use terms like “One Ton Cup” and its offshoots in a way that assumes total awareness by the listener of its multiple meanings, thereby further excluding those who find the language of…
The preliminary instructions suggest that the race from Kinsale would be round either the faraway Inishtearaght on the edge of the Blaskets, or the less distant but equally majestic Skellig Michael. It’s an opening salvo that gives a sense of…
Tom Dolan’s marvellous sunrise victory on Thursday in Stage 1 of the 2026 Figaro Solitaire was the most effective starting signal we could hope for in order to encourage us all into thinking the 2026 season really is under way…
The spectacular life and high-achieving times of Ted Turner (1938-2026) have become deeply interwoven with the folklore of international sailing and the tales of the global media and communications industry. So much so, in fact, that after his death at…
