Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

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 the dazzling variety of islands and rocks available to Ireland’s sailors when they’re setting an offshore racing course. And Kinsale Yacht Club have been doing it with the course of their conveniently adjustable Canto FitzGerald Inishtearacht Race, which started last night to do the Full Monty, round the Hy Brasil that is Inishearaght.

With the trophies for this weekend’s Cantor Fitzgerald Inishtearaght/Skellig Michael Race from Kinsale are (left to right) Rear Commodore Dave Cullinane (KYC), Daniel Murphy of Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland (Head of the Cork Office), Commodore Anthony O’Neill (KYC) and Vice Commodore Tomas O’Brien (KYC). Photo: KYC

Adults only. The majestic Inishtearaght is an impressive turning mark.

FASTNET ROCK IS OUTSHONE

The spectacular reputation of the iconic (alas, it’s the only word) Fastnet Rock may have made it the international symbol of sailing in Ireland. But those of us who live on the island can control our worship of this cult object, for we know that if we sail on past Mizen Head, we’ll find a selection of rocks and steep islands that put the Fastnet in the ha’penny place, a feeling that’s captured in this vid of the MOD 70 Phaedo 3 creating an anti-clockwise Round Ireland Record in 2016 

THIS ROCK’S GOT A HOLE IN IT

Before you even get to the Skelligs, there’s the Bull Rock just beyond Dursey Island. It’s not that big, so getting round it – once you’re reached it - shouldn’t be a lengthy chore. But if tedium sets in, you can shorten the experience by simply going through the neat tunnel in the middle.

Smugglers’ bolthole? The tunnel through the Bull Rock is so neat and appears so obviously man-made that you’d expect to find the Atlantic HQ of the villainous James Bond-battling Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his sinister Spectre organization in some electronics-filled rooms excavated within the rock. Photo: John Brennan

Not a place for an excessively vivid imagination. The tunnel through the Bull Rock can soon start to feel very spooky indeed. Photo: John Brennan

FOXALL DID IT

Round the World Race veteran Damien Foxall sailed out from his home port of Derrynane under the Kerry mountains to sail through the tunnel in his Laser, and it has been done on Windsurfers too. But a kitesurfer transit requires requires a very specific set of circumstances that may not have yet been fulfilled.

After you’ve spooked yourself out in the tunnel at the Bull Rock, an evening at Dromquinna Manor’s Boathouse Restaurant towards the head of the Kenmare River is soothing. Photo: DM

However, John Brennan of Dromquinna at the head of the Kenmare River pioneered the leading of a flotilla of RIBs large and small (some very large) through this slightly spooky cavern, which if nothing else permits us to use the term “Kenmare River” rather than the increasingly frequently-employed Kenmare Bay.

RASCALLY OLD SURVEYOR

We continue to call it a river, for that’s what it was called back in the 1600s by that rascally old surveyor and inventive polymath William Petty. Among other things, he was racing his experimental Arklow-built catamaran Simon & Jude in Dublin Bay in 1663, an event replicated by Hal Sisk in 1991, and worthy of celebration.

So naturally in surveying Ireland, Petty collared one of the choicest bits of Kerry coastline for himself. Then he took the opportunity – despite it being a significant ria-style sea inlet - to name it the Kenmare River. This gave him all the fishery rights along it, whereas if it had continued to be officially known as Kenmare Bay, everybody would have had a share of its fish.

Hal Sisk’s re-creation of William Petty’s 1663 Arklow-built pioneering catamaran Simon & Jude (left) in the River Liffey in 1991. In 1663, the original Simon & Jude out-performed a sailing “pleasure boatte” noted as the fastest of the time on Dublin Bay. In 1991, another Hal Sisk project, the re-creation of the 1796 Bantry Boat, was used. But despite the opposition in 1991 being a state-of-the-art fast sailer of 136 years later than the original S&J, the catamaran still won. Photo: W M Nixon

Petty’s behavioural record in Ireland was mixed, to say the least, but as he really did pioneer multihull sailing in Dublin Bay and out in the Channel, surely he deserves to be allowed to keep his Kenmare fish?

SPLENDID SKELLIGS

Meanwhile, beyond the Bull Rock you’re upon the Skelligs, simply awesome no matter how many times you sail round them. And beyond that again, the Blaskets are totally off the scale.

Skellig Michael astern. Liam Shanahan Jnr (National YC) at the helm of his family’s J/109 Ruth, with the Great Skellig astern and Ruth on the way to winning the 2015 Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race.

On along the west coast, Galway Bay Sailing Club use the Aran Islands as a giant race mark, in Sligo they use Inishmurray, and in Donegal the ultimate Ultima Thule, Tory Island, is occasionally called into use.

Lambay looking west, with the coast of Fingal beyond. Ideal as an extended race mark, the island manages to retain an away-from-it-all character despite being within the Greater Dublin Area. While the little harbour on the west side almost dries out at low water, cruising yachts with proper ground tackle can find wind-direction-dictated anchorages with overnight potential at Seal Hole (left foreground), Swallow Cove (aka Saltpans Bay) on the north coast, Harbour Anchorage south of the harbour on the west shore, and Talbot Bay on the south coast

IT’S LAMBAY DAY

At Ireland’s northeast and southeast corners, Rathlin Island and the Tuskar Rock are too tide-riven to make sense as individual marks to race round, but both of course are part of the Round Ireland Course. Then between them, off the Leinster coast, Rockabill and Lambay both provide good racing, and today even as the Kinsale fleet are making their turn off Kerry, the Howth fleet are taking on the much easier but still intriguing challenge of racing round Lambay, which they’ve been doing since 1902.

GROUP MEDIOCRITY?

Predicting the winner is anyone’s guess, as today’s winner gets the shapely Lambay Lady Trophy, in being since 1986. Nowadays they don’t all sail the same course – Classes 0 and 1 may even be sent to Rockabill to keep them busy - and thus the Lambay Lady goes to the class winner with the biggest margin between first and second.

This can spur an acrimonious debate about rewarding group mediocrity, but we wouldn’t dream of getting into that particular snakepit on this hopeful Bank Holiday Saturday morning, and anyway experience indicates that anyone actually winning the Lambay Lady (she has shades of The Little Mermaid in Copenhagen) is suddenly of the opinion that it’s a very clever and sensible way to solve a difficult handicap and prizes problem.

Squib sailors Robert & Fiona Marshall from Killyleagh on Strangford Lough trailed their boat south for Howth YC’s Lambay Race in 2023, and did such a horizon job on the Howth Squibs that they won the Lambay Lady. Photo: HYC

For in any case with its entry of 21 boats, the alternative focus of the Kinsale race to West Kerry and back has a straightforward appeal, particularly as the late entries have included the Royal Cork YC’s Granada 38 Cavatina, a veteran which – in the ownership of Eric Lisson and then Ian Hickey – has put an indelible record of steady success on the Round Ireland Race, and the Azores & Back and the Fastnet races too.

Ian Hickey’s Cavatina from Crosshaven is racing both the Inishtearaght Race from Kinsale this weekend, and the Round Ireland from Wicklow (which she has won twice) in three weeks time. Photo: Robert Bateman

INISHTEARACHT RACE 2026 ENTRIES

The 2024 Inishtearacht race winner, Chris Power Smith’s J/122 Aurelia (Royal St George YC), is also back in the hunt from Kinsale, and joined by another Dublin Bay hotshot, John Treanor’s NMD 43 Cristina, which happens to be the smaller sister of the Round Ireland race 2024 winner, Eric de Turckheim’s NMD 54 Teasing Machine from France.

As of yesterday (Friday 29th May) Teasing Machine had not nominated for the Round Ireland from Wicklow on June 20th, but the addition of Cavatina to the entry list brings it up to an impressive 56 boats, another late entry being the old French warhorse L’Espirit d’Equipe, which as Export 33 became a Whitbread Race veteran.

BELLINO WINS MYTH TROPHY

Of those long entered for the Round Ireland, Rob Craigie’s Sun Fast 3600 Bellino, raced double-handed with RORC Commodore Deb Faith as co-skipper, is on an impressive count-down to the big one at mid-summer. Last weekend they were overall winners of the 245-mile RORC Race for the Myth of Malham Trophy.

John Illingworth’s Myth of Malham still looks as fresh today as she did at her sensational debut in 1947.\

This meant something special for the RORC Commodore, as she is on record as saying that her favourite boat in the hundred year long story of the Royal Ocean Racing Club is John Illingworth’s super-pioneering Myth of Malham.

The Myth arrived like a sudden inspirational starburst on the exhausted post-war scene in 1947, and won just about everything for which she was entered, including two Fastnet Races. And it tells much about the great John Illingworth and designer Jack Laurent Giles that photos of the Myth (for sadly she is no more) show her to look as modern today as when she first burst upon the scene.