Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
We reach the end of 2022 with sailing in Ireland in good heart. Weatherwise, it was by no means a perfect season. For sure, there were periods of heatwave, but heatwaves can be bad news for good steady sailing breezes.…
If you’re looking for somebody Irish on the biggest fastest boat racing to Hobart from Monday’s traditional start in Sydney Harbour, then you got it – the hugely experienced big boat racer Justin Slattery of Wexford and Cork is on…
With a chest-clogging cold snap of soul-sapping frozen fogs likely to be replaced here this weekend by roof-lifting wet and windy gales, the very thought of sun-dappled Sydney Harbour and its sublime sailing will be a spirit-raiser for yotties throughout…
When you sail west past Mizen Head in the deep south, or Malin Head in the far north, you know you’re getting into the real Atlantic territory, where they do things differently afloat and ashore. For although the hundreds of…
With November just ended, today’s assessment at the beginning of December for the latest “Sailors of the Month” listings would normally include at least one of our young sailors who starred to such good effect in the European Sailing Championship…
Did we really manage it? Did we really cram all those major special and routine regular sailing events into the one season of 2022? And all that despite its three main months afloat experiencing decidedly mixed weather? And also despite…
Is most “ocean racing” today really oceanic? Does “offshore racing” really involve going truly offshore? Are boats touted as being “cruiser-racers” ever really used for genuine cruising? And are sailing enthusiasts who like to think of themselves as being devoted…
Sailing sport has previously been halted within personal memory, both by world wars and more locally-based hostilities. And we don’t have to go very far beyond living individual recollection to gauge how the lingering effects of Spanish Flu in 1919…
Anyone with a basic knowledge of the development of sailing in Ireland – particularly from 1890 onwards – will be aware that women sailors played an active role afloat in this country’s sailing boat sport for a long time. For…
When the multi-talented John B Kearney (1879-1967) retired from a distinguished career in Dublin Port in 1944, he re-focused most of his attention on his parallel interest as a yacht designer and builder. It was an enduring passion that went…
For most sailors in what is Ireland’s largest and busiest pier-enclosed recreational harbour, MGM Boats of Dun Laoghaire are, first and foremost, the people who provide the essential service of one of Ireland’s largest and most versatile travel hoists. For…
Ted Crosbie combined so many of the strongest threads of Cork life that he embodied an entire Munster universe of personal positivity. Family was everything to him, but so too was the unique and bustling maritime city of Cork and…
The Olympic authorities see the Laser as the floating equivalent of the pole-vaulter’s vaulting pole, thereby making Laser sailors into proper individual athletes, and very worthy of Olympic inclusion.But meanwhile, some in the upper echelons of Olympic decision-making see two-person…
September is a month of harvests afloat as it is ashore, and as we reach October with its inescapable sense of the change in the seasons, our bountiful new monthly list of no less than six different and distinctive September…
The Kenmare River where Kerry verges into Cork is one of Ireland’s cruising gems – it’s pure gold and then some. But we weren’t exactly cruising when the Nixon Tribe descended on the area precisely a year ago for a…
The Helmsman’s Championship? Crazy name. Surely it should at least have been The Helmsmen’s Championship? Yet in its quirkiness, it achieved brand recognition to die for. Everyone knew what it meant, so much so it could even be shortened to…