Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here …. That the Royal Cork at Crosshaven is the oldest yacht club in the world is well-known, even if there are some elements who have challenged, though unsuccessfully, that…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast ….  The Squib Class are heading for Lough Derg this weekend where the Yacht Club is holding its annual Freshwater Keelboat Championships at Dromineer. It’s an end-of-season event and, for Squib sailors, follows…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast … Sailing the 27-foot yacht he has owned for 20 years, Jim Doyle helmed Green Sleeves to win the ‘Alta to Starboard Trophy’ in Monkstown Bay. It’s an unusual trophy, made by the…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here ….. Sailing is at a “tipping point” across the water in the UK – with the future coterie of potential sailors, the “Millennials” as they are described, taking a…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney reporting on current sailing and maritime topics and this week, reflecting on how I have been fortunate during my years of sailing and reporting the sport to meet many disabled…

Hello and welcome to the weekly MacSweeney Podcast … There is no national listing that I can find of the number of incidents in which leisure craft have become entangled in fishing gear in Irish waters. When it happens, this…

Hello and welcome to the weekly MacSweeney Podcast …. It’s been a week with interesting topics, from dirty boats to dirty ports, the pleasant sight of island-racing dinghies but the nastier tale of what submarines might be doing off the…

The annual Cobh to Blackrock Sailing race was once, traditionally, the closing race of the sailing season in Cork Harbour. That no longer prevails as the sailing season has extended over the years into December for cruiser classes and practically…

On last week’s Podcast I wrote about the great Galway Hookers at the ‘Cruiniú’ – the Gathering of the Boats in Kinvara County Galway, a centre of traditional wooden boats. There are other boats sailing in the waters off Kinvara…

The Chairman of the Galway Hookers Association says that these iconic boats deserve support to ensure their future as part of Ireland’s maritime heritage. Dr.Michael Brogan told me in an interview which you can hear on this week’s Podcast (below):…

Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist who wrote ‘Treasure Island,’ didn’t have much regard for politicians. “Politics,” he wrote in ‘Familiar Studies of Men and Books,’ a collection of his articles and essays is “perhaps the only profession for which…

It’s great to see young sailors enthusiastic about the sport. Watching Topper dinghy sailors training for their big challenge, with determination and focus, is encouraging. The sport has a future if it can hold onto young sailors. This weekend young…

The family of the RNLI Coxswain who led the Ballycotton Lifeboat in the famous Daunt Rock rescue in 1936, have presented the medals which he was awarded for the rescue to Cork City Museum. The medals, presented to Patrick Sliney,…

“One good Tern deserves another,” I was told in a discussion during the past week about the increasing importance of Dublin Bay in marine conservation terms – around the same time as Dublin Port announced that it was not going…

My main interest at Cork Week was the red yacht moored at the marina, making its first appearance in Ireland and described as ‘a sailor’s yacht.’ Several years ago I met the man who is proud of that description, though…

I remember being part of a fleet of some 700 yachts, the sight of which, winding its way in a long parade out of Crosshaven every morning to the racing grounds, drew crowds to watch Cork Week. Those days have…