Blogs
The recently-published ISA Survey of Club Racing commissioned and supervised by Board Member Jack Roy has started the process of putting together a realistic picture of how we sail and go afloat for recreation, and it was analysed on publication…
Tara McCarthy has a magnificent view out of her office windows. “You could look out there all day,” she says as we chat in the office on Crofton Road in Dun Laoghaire, looking out on Dublin Bay. Even on a…
The governments in both jurisdictions in Ireland have included an all-Ireland sail training ship for the Atlantic Youth Trust in their long term capital expenditure proposals. And the movement in favour of support for this project has become so strong…
My Podcast about membership of sailing and yacht clubs - GETTING MEMBERS IN – INSTEAD OF KEEPING PEOPLE OUT - drew a lot of attention and comment…. It seems to have touched a topic that quite a few people felt…
Should Results From the Women's Olympic Radial Trial Be Based on Female Participation Only?
14th January 2016 Water Rat
The second Olympic Women's Laser Radial trial in Miami is looming but it looks like there were some unexpected implications from December's first trial between Annalise Murphy and Aoife Hopkins in Rio because men were racing with women in the…
Not all of our politicians have the necessary awareness and training to understand the daily risks of working and living on an island nation with the coastline, streams, rivers, lakes, ponds and canals that have the potential for drowning tragedies…
As a vehicle sport dominated by weather conditions, sailing can be difficult enough to explain to the outside world. But when you factor in the constantly changing situation which is youth sailing, where crew dynamics of size, weight and attitude…
It’s annual general meeting time and for most sailing clubs one of the big issues will be membership. Some readers and club members may prefer the description ‘yacht’ clubs, but ‘Sailing’ was chosen by the national association a few years ago…
As anticipated here a week ago, the annual 629-mile Rolex Sydney Hobart Race kept offshore racing and nautical entertainment addicts all around the world enthralled through the Christmas period. And it has produced a story to suit almost all tastes.…
At “the turn of the year” as it is still called by many of the older generation, it is customary to look back at the year past and remember a few high points. There were many for me in compiling…
There’s nothing that really compares with the annual Rolex Sydney Hobart Race. While most of the more-populated parts of the world in the Northern Hemisphere are in their midwinter shutdown, somnolent and sluglike in a festival of consumer excess, away…
The world sailing organisation has changed its name – and about time too! The initials, ISAF, had to be explained in the English language as – International Sailing Federation. Having to explain an organisation’s name does it no favours. The…
The recreational marine industry is a demanding trade. Your customers buy boats for pleasure, so they assume it’s a fun business to work in. Thus there’s no lack of potential boat designers and builders to be found among the children…
I met a man this week who wants to make St.Stephen’s Day a national day of remembrance for those who have died in tragedies at sea. There has never before been such a day in Ireland. Noel McDonagh is from…
The season is upon us for goodwill and dreams of very special gifts. And for many Irish sailors, the dream Christmas present would be an elegantly classic or solidly traditional wooden boat, with all maintenance and running costs somehow covered…
The dominant subject in the past week has been the weather – pictures on television and in the newspapers of water pouring through streets, into houses, shops, stranded cars and so on – bringing in its wake flooding, destruction, tragedy…
