Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
National Yacht Club's Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race is Clarion Call for Ireland's 2021 Sailing Season
5th June 2021 W M Nixon
Way back whenever, as each wave of COVID seemed to sweep over its predecessor with a power worthy of Aileens herself, the incurable optimists among Ireland's sailors continued to hope that by some miracle we'd have reached a stage on…
While there may have been nothing exactly like the current schedule-wrecking Pandemic before, in times past - nationally and internationally - we've come through comparable catastrophes. And enough of previous generations have survived to tell the tale and provide guidance…
"Sailing is a lifestyle activity which evolves as an expression of a vehicle sport afloat". There you go. So now you know. And please note that it's "lifestyle" and not "lifetime", though the latter also applies. Yet you were thinking…
Time was when the question of whether the 2020-Olympics-in-2021 should or should not be staged would have been described as the Elephant in the Room, suggesting the presence of an imponderable so large and unthinkable that the sanity-seeking majority of…
Sailing in Dublin Bay Area in 2021 Will Be Resuming on a "Gently Does It" Basis
8th May 2021 W M Nixon
The welcome announcement that the National Yacht Club's biennial 280-mile Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race 2021 will be going ahead on Wednesday, June 9th, is encouraging. But it should not be seen as a clarion call to get the 2021…
For this week's Sailing on Saturday we take a look back eight years when WM Nixon cruised from Ireland to the Outer Hebrides in the 36-foot vintage restored sloop Ainmara #hebrides – August is almost upon us. The heat has…
The Olympic Flame is now well into its progression through Japan, on a Marathon of Marathons which is seeing runners of every shape and size and type carry it into all of the 47 Prefectures which make up that most…
Welcome to Nautical Limbo Land. This weekend may see the annual start-of-season lift-ins – with masked-up socially-distanced protocols - at the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club, the National YC, and the Royal St George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. But…
How quickly can we hope to return to the carefree style of sailing sociability which reflects the mood displayed above, as seen in the officially-accredited Sporting & Cultural Mission from Howth Yacht Club on its traditional biennial visit to the…
The impression conveyed in the image above of good-humoured sport afloat at the first regatta from the new harbour of Kingstown on July 22nd 1828 is so lively that today we easily forgive the relatively unskilled work of the artist,…
Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association (ISORA) Has Golden Jubilee This Year
20th March 2021 W M Nixon
On Sunday, August 29th 1971, a group of offshore devotees who had campaigned the previous day's annual cross-channel Abersoch-Howth Race for the James C Eadie Cup gathered in the bar of Howth Yacht Club and gave some purpose to their…
O'Brien Kennedy: IDRA 14s' 75th Focuses Fresh Light on Eccentric Irish Sailing Dinghy Designer
13th March 2021 IDRA 14
You know how it is. You're wondering if the slightly odd flavour of the evening cuppa is a hint of the imminence of the C-Monster's indicator of taste-loss. All this, too, just as it's increasingly clear that your already-proposed personal…
Conor O'Brien's Circumnavigation Centenary at Dun Laoghaire is Already on Horizon
6th March 2021 W M Nixon
Ireland's Conor O'Brien was the first amateur skipper to circumnavigate the globe by the classic sailing ship route south of the great Capes, running down his easting in the big winds of the Great Southern Ocean which blow unhindered round…
When the "low black schooner" America won what was to become an historic race around the Isle of Wight on Friday 22nd August 1851 from a small fleet of varied English yachts, thereby winning a silver ewer which was eventually…
The Irish Cruising Club has been producing a printed Annual collating its members doings afloat and ashore through logs and narratives for ninety years now. And while these days this substantial collection is in circulation before Christmas as a matter…
Tom Dolan: Ireland's 25th 'Sailor of the Year' Provides a Heartening Story for Our Time
13th February 2021 W M Nixon
The Figaro Solo was arguably the peak in sailing competition – both inshore and offshore – in Europe during 2020. In a truncated and contorted season, somehow the crème de la creme of international solo sailing were guided into a…
