Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Did we really manage it? Did we really cram all those major special and routine regular sailing events into the one season of 2022? And all that despite its three main months afloat experiencing decidedly mixed weather? And also despite…

Paramedic Patrick Dunne is a keen kitesurfer, windsurfer, sailor, swimmer and general watersports enthusiast who has volunteered with the RNLI. He has initiated a petition opposing Galway County Council’s new draft bye-laws which propose to ban watersports apart from swimming…

Is most “ocean racing” today really oceanic? Does “offshore racing” really involve going truly offshore? Are boats touted as being “cruiser-racers” ever really used for genuine cruising? And are sailing enthusiasts who like to think of themselves as being devoted…

Cork’s community boatyard, Meitheal Mara, has appointed writer, sailor and adventurer, Jasper Winn, as its “writer-in-motion”. His task is to write a book about its history since foundation in 1993, analysing what it has achieved and looking to its future.…

Sailing sport has previously been halted within personal memory, both by world wars and more locally-based hostilities. And we don’t have to go very far beyond living individual recollection to gauge how the lingering effects of Spanish Flu in 1919…

Anyone with a basic knowledge of the development of sailing in Ireland – particularly from 1890 onwards – will be aware that women sailors played an active role afloat in this country’s sailing boat sport for a long time. For…

Marine archaeologist Mensun Bound has witnessed great works of art lying on the seabed and chests overflowing with treasure, but says, “nothing compares with finding the Endurance....” Speaking at the recent Shackleton Autumn School in Athy, Co Kildare, Bound described…

The “Spatial Squeeze” is a term you can expect to hear quite a lot about in the immediate future. It’s all to do with the increasing competition for space in the offshore sector. Wind energy developers require space for wind-generating…

When the multi-talented John B Kearney (1879-1967) retired from a distinguished career in Dublin Port in 1944, he re-focused most of his attention on his parallel interest as a yacht designer and builder. It was an enduring passion that went…

For most sailors in what is Ireland’s largest and busiest pier-enclosed recreational harbour, MGM Boats of Dun Laoghaire are, first and foremost, the people who provide the essential service of one of Ireland’s largest and most versatile travel hoists. For…

The Royal Cork Yacht Club (RCYC) at Crosshaven has received a lot of praise for the running of Sunday’s Autumn League during a “weather window” in Cork Harbour, getting the fleet home before a gale hit the Cork area which…

“Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalk scrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a drying line with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersman and master mariners. Human…

Ted Crosbie combined so many of the strongest threads of Cork life that he embodied an entire Munster universe of personal positivity. Family was everything to him, but so too was the unique and bustling maritime city of Cork and…

The Olympic authorities see the Laser as the floating equivalent of the pole-vaulter’s vaulting pole, thereby making Laser sailors into proper individual athletes, and very worthy of Olympic inclusion.But meanwhile, some in the upper echelons of Olympic decision-making see two-person…

English firefighter Paul Hopkins (55) had recovered from a brain haemorrhage and entrepreneur Phil Pugh (65) was renowned for undertaking extreme physical challenges in honour of his son when they rowed into Antigua in a fourth-hand wooden rowing boat in…

September is a month of harvests afloat as it is ashore, and as we reach October with its inescapable sense of the change in the seasons, our bountiful new monthly list of no less than six different and distinctive September…