Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

“Good news everyone”, the natives have returned...” It’s not your average title to a scientific paper, but this one has reason to celebrate - hailing the return of native oysters to Belfast Lough after a century. The paper by Bangor…

"Someone needs to bang the table and bang heads together. Do State agencies talk to each other?" That blunt statement caused me to think a lot this week when I am still disappointed at official attitudes towards the marine sector.…

It's getting to be like a game of skittles in the planned lineup of high-profile 2021 events which everybody - way back in the dark depths of earlier pandemic lockdowns – thought would surely come to pass in the remote…

Why do Japanese fishing vessels steam halfway around the world to catch tuna on the Irish Continental Shelf edge, and why do Norwegian vessels hunt for highly valuable blue whiting in these waters? Arthur Reynolds, the founding editor of The…

It seems logical, boats move, but that is their business. The Department of Finance takes a different view. It has told boat operators that this mobility excludes them from being given the supports offered to businesses which are landbound –…

For sure, the pandemic-plagued year of 2020 - with its stop-start framework of activity afloat and ashore - was something beyond most sailors' experience. Yet ours is nothing if not a can-do sport. And while some sailing enthusiasts – particularly…

Pandemic restrictions have forced us all to live like trapped adventurers “on a metaphorical ice floe”, according to the Shackleton Museum in Athy, Co Kildare And so “What would Shackleton do?” was the title of five podcasts which it released…

What would our island nation be like if we did not have thriving coastal communities? How much awareness is there amongst government politicians and the mandarins of the civil service that there is a considerable level of fear and concern…

Dublin Bay Sailing Club's recognition today as the Mitsubishi Motors "Sailing Club of the Year" 2021 on the strength of achieving a remarkably full programme in 2020 when Pandemic Regulations permitted is well merited. Yet it's only the second time…

As details emerge on the full negative impact of Brexit on the Irish fishing industry, two Wexford skippers have called for the appointment of a dedicated minister for marine.  Scallop skippers Will Bates and Seamus Molloy who fish from Kilmore…

Sailing should be marketed in the widest way possible to the public to increase participation. Clubs and the national association can do this together to emphasise its accessibility, the President of Irish Sailing, the national association, has told Afloat. In…

Our header photo is one whose use had not been anticipated for at least another month, and hopefully not at all. For it was optimistically expected that by late January, we'd have evidence the vaccines were beginning to work, with…

Atlantean conjures up images of sea serpents, mythical peoples living under the sea and it is also the title of a fascinating project which Aosdána member and filmmaker Bob Quinn embarked on in the early 1980s. The outcome was three…

The "sleeping giant" of the marine sector is how the marine tourism and leisure sector has been described. It may well be, despite how hard the Covid pandemic has hit it this year. The last socio-economic study of "Ireland's Ocean…

In normal times, the yearly Irish sailing fixtures list is a reasonably harmonious programme based around annual or biennial pillar events of various types and sizes, an ongoing succession of regattas and championships which slot together in a reasonably meaningful…

Coincidence is amazing, even if it's hard to believe. This week I'm inclined to credibility after Foreign Affairs, and Defence Minister Simon Coveney espoused the importance of the Naval Reserve when announcing the Government decision to establish a Commission "to…