Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
The 2026 ILCA 7 Worlds in Dublin Bay from 23rd to 30th August, hosted by the National Yacht Club of Dun Laoghaire with full logistics support from the neighbouring Royal St George YC, is by all official ratings the most…
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 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…
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…
What goes round, come round. Way back in 1972 we were doing a very leisurely family cruise with a Galion 22 in West Cork (small family then), and went in company with Dermod Kennedy and his ketch Richard of Baltimore…
As we count down through the fifty days to the Round Ireland 2026 start at Wicklow on Saturday June 20th, while counting upwards with a good chance of breaking the magic target of fifty entries as they finally come to…
The Irish sailing community may think of John Gore-Grimes of Howth, who has died at the age of 84 after a long and very fulfilled life, as primarily being one of our own. We think of him as a “sailing…
There are times you feel so much history-minded verbiage and other memorabilia is being newly churned out in Ireland, adding to the vast quantity already available, that we have urgent need of an Editor-in-Chief every bit as much as we…
When ace American yacht designer Olin Stephens raced the new-built 52ft yawl Dorade to Europe in 1931 to win the Transatlantic Race and then go on to win that year’s Fastnet Race, he was 23 years old. His co-skippering younger…
Once you’ve learned to accept that being way OTT is at the core of the 175-year-old America’s Cup circus as we sail on into Q2 of the 21st Century - with all sorts of predicted Armageddon and end-of-days dates stretching…
The J/109 Outrajeous (Johnny & Suzy Murphy, Howth YC) is now posted in the latest entry list for June 20th’s Round Ireland Race from Wicklow. This makes her the form boat for the Irish entrants, as she was overall winner…