Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

On a day that started with grey skies and torrential rain showers in my part of the world, the latter part of the day presented an evening of sunshine and light winds for a fifteen-boat fleet of Flying Fifteens in…

Seventeen boats contested the Flying Fifteen Westerns in Connemara this past weekend with visitors from Strangford Lough (1), Dunmore East (2) and Dublin Bay (6). Early arrivals on Friday were treated to an evening’s sail on a Galway Hooker and…

With six Dun Laoghaire-based Flying Fifteen crews contesting the Western Championships in Connemara and one other absentee, a turnout of ten boats for the second Saturday of DBSC 2023 wasn’t too bad a head count and those who made the…

The Irish Fireball Class opened their 2023 summer sailing season with a one-day training session and reported here on Afloat, followed by a one-day regatta -The Open Championship, hosted by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club (DMYC), with a programme of…

The last Sunday of the Frostbites, hosted by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club (DMYC) and sponsored by Viking Marine at Dun Laoghaire Harbour, ended on a high with steady winds out of the north that allowed two races to be sailed…

The Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC dinghy Frostbites at Dun Laoghaire Harbour concludes this Sunday, 26th March. There is a favourable forecast for the afternoon with 15/16 knots from the North, the current projection on XCWeather. As reported after last Sunday's racing,…

The film “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” dominated the Oscars on the Sunday before the Viking Marine DMYC Dinghy Frostbites second last Frostbite Sunday, and the Frostbite community on Sunday past might have enjoyed an amendment to this film title, along…

After the previous Sunday, March 5th, when the course for the first race was suitable for the second race, without adjustment from the first, Mother Nature gave the Viking Marine DMYC Frostbites Race Officer a more difficult time of it this…

From midweek, the forecast for this past Sunday of Viking Marine DMYC-sponsored Frostbite racing was favourable from a wind perspective – westerlies of the order of 10 – 12 knots but with a cool temperature. However, the latter wasn’t as…

On Sunday past, 26th February, a full quota of races was completed for the Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC dinghy Frostbites with all starts being clean, and some decidedly conservative. The overall fleet size was just under the fifty mark with the…

To use footballing parlance, yesterday’s Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC Frostbite session was “a game of two halves.” In the first half, we had a blustery race with winds building in the lead-up to the first warning signal, up to 17/18 knots,…

After a Sunday of too much breeze, followed by a Sunday of variable breeze, the DMYC Viking Marine Frostbites fleet had a Sunday where the wind was much more manageable in terms of consistency and strength. We also had a…

There are days when it is difficult for competitors, there are days when it is difficult for the Race Officer, and then there are days when it is difficult for everyone! Sunday, 5th February, was one of these latter days!!…

With “Frostbites Director” Neil Colin off on a sporting holiday, the decision on whether to race yesterday fell squarely on the shoulders of the day’s Race Officer, Cormac Bradley, and while I had been monitoring the weather as early as…

The Race Management Team from DMYC and the weather combined to get another two races completed in the Viking Marine-sponsored Series 2 Frostbites in Dun Laoghaire Harbour on Sunday. Winds were in the range 7 – 15 knots from the…

The critical aspect of last Sunday’s DMYC Frostbites, sponsored by Viking Marine, was the air temperature rather than the wind strength. True, there had been a severe wind warning as late at 13:00 on the Saturday, with Severe Gale Force…

The weather forecasts during the week leading up to Round two of the post-Christmas DMYC Frostbites in Dun Laoghaire, sponsored by Viking Marine, might have led one to believe that racing would not be possible. Indeed, on Thursday and Friday,…

A modest fleet of 20 boats sailed the Viking Marine sponsored DMYC hosted Christmas Cracker yesterday afternoon (Tuesday 27th) made up of a mix of Aeros, ILCA 7s, 6s and 4s, Fireballs, an RS400 and a 49er that joined in…

One of the largest one-design fleets in Dublin Bay Sailing Club, the Flying Fifteens, gathered at the end of November in the Royal St. George Yacht Club to mark the close of the 2022 season. In contrast to the previous…

In a week that saw the lowest overnight temperatures in 10 years in most parts of Ireland, the last weekend of the pre-Christmas Series 1 of the Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC Frostbites came to a mild, wet and windy end yesterday,…