Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon

Cork Harbour – “Where it All Began”. One of the finest natural harbours in the world, it provided a unique set of circumstances in 1720 to bring the world’s senior yacht club into existence, a pioneering organisation which has influenced the develpment of recreational sailing ever since. Crosshaven – home of the Royal Cork Yacht Club, is centre left

Royal Cork Yacht Club is Mitsubishi Motors 'Sailing Club of the Year 2020'

2nd January 2020 Sailing Club of the Year

The Royal Cork Yacht Club is the new Mitsubishi Motors Sailing Club of the Year, both in honour of its Tricentenary in 2020, and in celebration of a busy and successful season in 2019. The hospitable club faces this unprecedented…

Where did the original Mayflower’s Transatlantic voyage really begin? This is Mystic Seaport’s replica Mayflower II, and with the 400th Anniversary of the original’s voyage to America coming up in 2020, the people of Harwich on England’s East Coast claim that their links to the original Mayflower are much stronger than those of Plymouth in Devon.

If Your Port’s Name is Attached to a Sailing Event, Make Sure to Keep That Link Alive…

27th December 2019 W M Nixon

Some sailing events capture the popular imagination, while others – for some reason – simply pass by relatively unheeded. Either way, there’s no doubting that the 628-mile Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race is in the former category, with its crazy Christmas-time start…

Hot favourite in a heatwave: Matt Allen’s Botin TP 52 Ichi Ban 2 – with Gordon Maguire (on helm here) as sailing master - is reckoned to be the banker for next Thursday’s 75th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race.

Irish Sailing Looks to the Southern Hemisphere in Winter Solstice Weekend

20th December 2019 Sydney to Hobart

In Australia, the unprecedented heatwave is so totally engulfing the continent that respected observers of maritime weather patterns such as Matt Allen, owner/skipper of the very special Botin-designed TP52 development Ichi Ban 2, reckon that we’ll have to be a…

HYC Breakthrough, the First 40 which is the Howth entry for the 75th Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race of 630 miles in twelve days’ time

Howth Yacht Club Returns to New Sydney-Hobart Challenge

13th December 2019 Sydney to Hobart

Back in 1991 when the world seemed a much simpler place, a three-crew Irish team - using shrewdly-selected offshore racing boats chartered in Australia - took part in the then-popular International Southern Cross Series, which was built around a programme…

“The light of other days…..” The Dublin Bay 21 Naneen sails for the first time in 33 years in the otherworldly illumination of December sunshine on the Shannon Estuary. Photo: Kate Griffiths

Dublin Bay 21 'Naneen' Sails Again as Howth 17s Celebrate Restoration in Growing Irish Classics Revival

6th December 2019 W M Nixon

Sunshine in December imparts a surreal look to everything it illuminates with its vivid low-angled delineation. And for anyone who happened to be on the Shannon Estuary between Kilrush and Scattery Island on Monday afternoon this week, the sense of…

The modern Dragon class racing the 2019 Grand Prix at Cannes – an extraordinary transformation for a boat designed 90 years ago to be a weekend cruiser and club racer in the Swedish islands around Gothenburg.

Dragon Gold Cup at Kinsale Yacht Club Will Be Something Quite Magic

28th November 2019 Kinsale

The International Dragon Class and Kinsale seem to have been made for each other. When the Dragon Gold Cup is staged at the glossy south coast port next September, there will undoubtedly be a natural harmony to the event. With…

The 40th anniversary Round Ireland Race from Wicklow on June 20th will be an “alternative highlight” of the 2020 season, with fresh sponsorship from SSE Renewables. The 2018 winner, Baraka GP (a Ker 43), is seen here sweeping past Wicklow Head shortly after the start. The middle third of the race saw conditions go against her, and at one stage off the north coast of Mayo she was lying 23rd overall. But in the later stages, skipper Niall Dowling (RIYC) and navigator Ian Moore called the tactics to such good effect that Baraka took line honours and won overall. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O’Brien

2020 Irish Sailing Fixtures Preview: The Year of the Irish Sailing Club

21st November 2019 Northern Ireland Waters

Nobody seems yet to have nominated the already very special 2020 as The Year of the Sailing Club, or more accurately as The Year of the Irish Sailing Club. So here in Afloat.ie we’re just going to do that very…

Flying the flag for Ireland, asymmetric style. The US and UK in downwind dicing with Ireland, represented by Royal Cork YC and skippered by Anthony O’Leary, in the New York YC 20-team international series in September at Newport, RI. Ireland finished third overall in a series raced in the new Melges IC 37s, designed by Mark Mills of Wicklow

Irish Sailing’s Annual Rhythm is Structured Through 'Sailor of the Month' Awards

15th November 2019 W M Nixon

The Irish sailing and boating season seems to get longer and more complex with every passing year, yet the vast majority of us would like it all to happen on days of floating summery perfection, with the ideal weight of…

The Rolex Men’s Sailor of the Year 2019, 15-year-old Marco Gradoni of Italy, on his way to winning his third Optimist Worlds in a row at Antigua in July

World Sailing’s Bermuda Decisions Will have Longterm Significance as Young People Become the Real Adults

8th November 2019 Youth Sailing

What’s with today’s teenagers? Time was when your average teen aspired to sleep for 24 hours every day. The reason they slept for 24 hours every day was there were only 24 hours in the day. Move the dial-up to…

(Top) The yachts of the Water Club of the Harbour of Cork on fleet manoeuvres in 1738, as painted by Peter Monamy. Founded in 1720 with just 25 members, the club’s early programme at sea was to follow Sailing Orders with signals by flags from the Admiral’s yacht. But by the 1760s, the occasional race was being held, and by the 1780s racing was a more regular part of the programme Reproduced by courtesy RCYC and (above) Royal Cork 1720 Sportsboats at speed. The Water Club had become the Royal Cork YC by 1831, and having been unique at its foundation in 1720, it had now become part of a much broader development of sailing in both its cruising and racing forms. By the 1970s-1990s, Crosshaven had become a remarkable nucleus for advanced ideas, and the Royal Cork 1720 Sportsboats of 1994 became international trend-setters Photo: Bob Bateman

Irish Sailing Preview: Royal Cork’s Tricentenary Makes 2020 the Year of Years

1st November 2019 Cork300

You thought 2019 was quite the busy sailing year in Ireland? Believe me folks, after writing last Saturday’s marathon review of one very special season, we went through the weekend in a state of mental meltdown which wasn’t helped by…

Summertime on Dublin Bay. In a season of very mixed weather, the biennial Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta managed its usual trick of finding a useful little bit of precious summer.

Irish Sailing 2019 Review: Mixed Weather & Fortunes in 'Seven Week Scrunch-up'

24th October 2019 W M Nixon

With two World Championships on the agenda, and Ireland’s biggest sailing event – the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta - making its biennial appearance at mid-season, 2019’s sailing programme couldn’t be anything other than interesting as it also included the increasingly…

The SB20 has been in Ireland since 2003, but with an increasingly strong class organisation now headed by John Malone of Lough Ree YC, its position is stronger than ever with two overall wins in a row recorded in the annual All-Ireland Helmsmans Championship. Healthy class organisations are essential for the general good of Irish sailing

Irish Sailing Needs to be More Upbeat About its Future

11th October 2019 W M Nixon

Here in the Sailing on Saturday verbiage production complex in a hidden bunker under a nameless hill off an un-named coast of Ireland, all this maundering-on about a gloomy future for sailing in general and Irish sailing, in particular, passes…

Olympian Cathy MacAleavey (left) with her daughter Claudine racing their Dublin Bay Water Wag on the Shannon. Cathy will be the only woman helm in this weekend’s All-Ireland Sailing Championship at Dun Laoghaire, crewed by her husband Con Murphy

Only in Ireland Could the Supreme Sailing Championship Produce Such Diverse Contenders

4th October 2019 National YC

Only in Ireland could it be like this. We hear that of many things in this curious island of ours. But the varying sailing, location and personal backgrounds of the sixteen helmspersons competing in this weekend’s All-Ireland Helmsmans Championship at…