Friday evening’s announcement of the Irish Sailor of the Year 2023 title for 19-year-old Eve McMahon at her sailing home of Howth Yacht Club well captures the zeitgeist of mid-2020s…
Friendship, family and sailing enjoyment expressed enthusiastically through quietly efficient organisations - that was the warm theme which dominated Thursday evening’s convivial gathering in the National Yacht Club on Dun…
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…
Bow to bow, they stretch five kilometres – that's how the Rolex Fastnet yacht race organisers have welcomed the record entry for this summer’s race, which will have a new finish in Cherbourg, France. Some ten Irish entries are among…
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…
Two and a half years after Dublin solo sailor Gregor McGuckin returned from the Golden Globe Race, the strong public interest in Gregor's story led me to Malahide Marina Boatyard in County Dublin for this week's podcast. As regular Afloat…
Some 30 per cent of researchers worldwide are female, according to UNESCO which marks International Day of Women and Girls in Science this week About 35 per cent of all students in STEM-related fields – that’s science, technology, engineering and…
In these long-lived times, a Silver Jubilee is not what it used to be in an era when Golden Jubilees, Centenaries, Tricentenaries and whatever you're having yourself are cascading around us in an almost continuous nostalgia-fest. Nevertheless the healthy Quarter…
The Government’s ambitious plans for renewable energy off the Atlantic coast should involve communities as active stakeholders and not just recipients of compensation, an island energy co-op has said. Dara Ó Maoildhia, chairman of Comharchumann Fuinneamh Oileáin Árann, the Aran…
The Chief Executive of the State agency, Water Safety Ireland, has made an appeal to all fishermen to take a "risk-based approach" to safety throughout the year to reduce tragedies which coastal communities have endured. John Leech says that the…
Dublin and its Port. The City and the Sea. The Culture and the Commerce. The Buzz and the Business. The sense of real working and creative life, with the romance of the ocean and the hint of salty far horizons,…
“We’ll always give our best, treat every incident as if it is one of our own.... and try our utmost to get a missing family member back to their loved one.....” The words of Lieut Stephen Stack, head of the…
It is time to look at renewing club memberships. With lockdown continuing and no certainty about when the country will "re-open", renewals are easy to forget. But clubs need them and many saw a reduction and slowness in paying those…
At one stage last Autumn, it looked for a week or two as though Irish venues might be hosting no less than five World Championships for dinghy classes during the three week period between the July 24th and August 14th…
“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…