Cork Harbour Dinghies Ready for Ballinacurra Race and The Schooner Brooklands

12th May 2022

The start of last year's Ballinacurra Race for National 18s off Cobh Credit: Bob Bateman

The home of Ireland’s last engineless freight-carrying schooner, the Brooklands, will be the centre of the popular Ballinacurra Race in Cork Harbour this Sunday.

Creenan’s hostelry in Ballinacurra village near Midleton in East Cork will be the mecca for dinghy sailors at the annual race from Cobh to Ballinacurra. Organised by Cove Sailing Club in conjunction with the National 18 Class, it will start at 3 p.m. from the Spit Bank area off Cobh.

This is a race for Class 1, Class 2 and Cobh’s Rankin dinghies that will take the fleet up past East Ferry through the narrow and shallower waters towards Ballinacurra village. This narrow and shallow area is challenging. The destiny of the Ballinacurra Cup can be decided in that final part of the race course.

Cobh’s Rankin dinghies are also taking part in the Ballinacurra Race Photo: Bob Bateman

Once a busy commercial port, from sailing ship days, through the tall ships era, to smaller cargo, coastal vessels that carried coal, timber, iron, slate, flax for the linen industry and malting, Ballinacurra Port closed to business in 1962. It was deemed too expensive by Cork Port to dredge the approaches to keep it clear of silting mud.

Venturing up that way in anything other than dinghies is definitely challenging!

The race is always well-supported by the dinghy sailors in the harbour clubs. Prizegiving will be in the famous “Jacko’s” which is Creenan’s village pub, hearkening back to the days of the family’s famous schooner, the Brooklands. The hostelry is across the road from the memorial to the local man who started his sailing career in waters off the village - Edward Bransfield, who discovered Antarctica.

Published in Cork Harbour, National 18, Royal Cork YC, Cove Sailing Club, Monkstown Bay Sailing Club

Published in Cork Harbour

Tagged under

Ballinacurra Race

About The Author

Tom MacSweeney

Email The Author

Tom MacSweeney writes a column for Afloat.ie. He is former RTE Marine Correspondent/Presenter of Seascapes and now has a monthly Podcast on the Community Radio Network and Podcast services

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.