Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
What, you might well wonder, is a blatant billboard doing at the top of the page this Saturday morning, even if it is exactly a month to Christmas, and Christmas has come early for Ireland’s younger international sailors in 2023?…
The Cruising Group can often emerge as the backbone of any sailing club, particularly in the winter. Back in the day when the new Howth Yacht Club premises opened in March 1987, fresh concepts were needed to ensure that the…
Tom Dolan halted his latest Round Ireland speed challenge on October 31st due to worsening weather forecasts off the South and Southwest coast. It was a disappointing decision for him and his team and a great many readers who had…
It’s prize-giving time down beside the Old Granite Pond. Last night (Friday), Commodore Eddie Totterdell presided over Dublin Bay Sailing Club’s annual re-distribution of their enormous cache of trophies in the National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire. And tonight (Saturday),…
A statement from Tom Dolan Racing, issued at 07:54 on the morning of Wednesday, November 1st after his anti-clockwise Round Ireland Campaign from Dublin in his Figaro 3 had been abruptly brought to a halt at Dingle on Tuesday evening…
It has been a remarkable week for Irish sailing, with our clubs last weekend managing to get in the complete programme of Autumn League racing despite being close in on the tail end of Storm Babet. Meanwhile, Eve McMahon confirmed…
As solo star Tom Dolan said when he arrived this week in Greystones to position himself on stand-by for his waiting-game round Ireland record challenge from the Kish Lighthouse, the current increasingly Autumnal weather pattern is much more encouragingly dynamic…
You never really know when you’re experiencing history in the making. It was early in March 1973 when we were invited to Portaferry, along the east side of the Narrows going into Strangford Lough, on a Saturday morning. The idea…
It seems the sailing world has “recovered from recovering from the pandemic lockdowns”, as the world’s year-round programme of major events – particularly high-profile offshore challenges – swings back into top gear. Not that some of these events didn’t somehow…
The life story of Sean Flood, who has died at the age of 91, is in many ways the story of modern Ireland as seen through a sailing and business lens. From a family of traditionally and strongly patriotic outlook,…
The sailing scene in Ireland has lost three significant figures this past week with the deaths of Liam Shanahan of Dun Laoghaire, Mick Hunt of Howth, and Sean Flood of The Baily overlooking Dublin Bay. They were very much distinctive…
They’ve been part of our sailing furniture for so long that you could be forgiven for thinking Ireland’s historic local classes might just quietly fade away through being barely noticed. But you’d be very much mistaken. 2023 has been a…
When the three-day Irish Cruiser-Racing Association monday.com-sponsored annual National Championship gets underway today (Friday) at Howth, it will be the combination of a modern innovation in Irish sailing, which is barely twenty years old, and a local regatta tradition of…
Yesterday (Friday), Afloat.ie listed eight of our “Sailor of the Month” awards for August 2023. As most involved either double-handed teams or helmsmen representing more numerous crews, in total, the achievements mentioned highlighted the successful sailing performance of 22 people…
The Solitaire du Figaro has been a significant feature of the European sailing scene for 54 years now, and today it is well established as La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, supported by the 1985-founded French re-cycling and green energy conglomerate.…
The international J Boat fleet, with its many variants, fills a special role in world sailing, with an underlying sense of family permeating this attractive no-nonsense craft. For it all of course, stems from the initial creative introduction – explosion,…