Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
There was a certain optimism in the Sailing on Saturday HQ a week ago, with the day looking to improve in a useful way to facilitate the Autumn racing at home, while far away in the South Atlantic Pat Lawless…
So what’s new? When has the Mediterranean - Mare Nostrum, Our Sea, the salty beating heart of Western civilization - not been ultimately centre stage? For sure, the focus in mid-summer may swing briefly elsewhere, to the Baltic or the…
When Annalise Murphy of the National Yacht Club won the Dinghy Division of Sailing’s Championship of the Champions in Ireland last Sunday (October 4th) after two days of racing in Melges 15s at the Royal St George Yacht Club in…
Sailing’s Championship of Champions Gets Fresh Head of Steam With 80th Anniversary On Horizon
3rd October 2026 All Irelands
The new-look Championship of Champions is taking place during this and next weekend, with the Dinghy Championship starting this morning for two days at Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire racing Melges 15s with GP14 ace Ger Owens of…
Horses for Courses? Choosing the Right “Cruiser-Racer” Involves More Than Speed Potential
26th September 2026 W M Nixon
Time was that when you went down to do the West Cork regattas with your beloved little cruiser-racer, you naturally expected to live aboard throughout the week. But as the fleets grew and the racing became more intense, even the…
There are reasonably sound scientific reasons for thinking that any living breathing mammal in the Northern Hemisphere will be slightly off his, her or its trolley as the month of March comes upon us. In fact, after the long gloom…
The concept of the Golden Globe Challenge, the four-yearly non-stop round the world race for boats not more than 36ft LOA designed pre-1988 with a traditional closed hull shape, may indeed have developed in order to celebrate Robin Knox-Johnston’s pioneering…
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)…
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…
