Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

RTÉ News reports that investigations are under way after a diver died in an incident off Co Donegal on Saturday (22 June). Patrick Doran (49) from Carrick-on-Shannon got into difficulty while on a scheduled dive as part of the North…

24 hours into the Round Ireland Yacht Race, the predicted weather pattern is largely coming true as the bigger and faster boats look likely to benefit first from stronger southerly winds along the west coast and high up in the…

Sunday (Day 2, 1330 hrs): Afloat.ie’s predictor Mystic Meg is currently on the button with the suggestion that the Round Ireland Race’s expected weather pattern of a favourable southerly along the West Coast would suit the bigger boats, as they should…

Sunday (Day 2, 0800 hrs): The first morning of the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland race finds the fleet making progress along the south coast in winds that developed as a night breeze off the land, but looks like fading…

The 44Cup Marstrand is providing the nine teams with the full range of conditions. After a heavy day, a light day, Saturday started strongly with an additional feature: intermittent rain. To recover the lost schedule, four races were held; rain…

In advance of the final eighth race of the National Squib championships at the Royal Forth Yacht Club, it was apparent that two Squibs were dominating the daily results; they were Micky Wright’s ‘Spoof’ from the Royal Corinthian YC at…

Saturday (Day 1) 1930hrs - Experienced round Ireland racers tend to regard the first leg of the Round Ireland Race from Wicklow to the Tuskar Rock as being the shuffling of the pack, with the serious playing beginning after the…

Finbarr O'Regan's J109 Artful Dodger suffered mast damage, preventing the Kinsale Yacht Club entry from competing in Saturday afternoon's Round Ireland Yacht Race from Wicklow. As Afloat reported earlier, the start was a choppy affair with wind over tide off…

The pre-race favourite Teasing Machine, Pete Smyth’s Searcher and James Neville’s Ino Noir had the best of today’s (Saturday 22 June) classic upwind start in the 22nd SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race off Wicklow in a 16-knot testing southerly…

Michael McCann's Etchells 22 Don't Dilly Dally leads Royal Cork Yacht Club's June IRC League on five points after three Thursday evening races sailed. Fiona Young's Albin Express North Star trails by six points on 11, having not competed on June 20th…

162 boats set sail from Newport, racing towards the Gulf Stream and kicking off the 53rd Newport Bermuda Race. For this first time in its 118-year history, the American race set sail from Fort Adams in Newport. As Afloat reported…

Five race wins (and all scores in the top five) at the 2024 Flying Fifteen British Isles Championships gave Graham Vials and Chris Turner in Floaty McFloatface a comfortable winning margin of 13 points to take the title on Strangford Lough Yacht…

Biologist and environmentalist Éanna Ní Lamhna has launched the first ever Irish book on aquatic plants, featuring 401 different river, lake and pond plant species. The 576-page Aquatic Plants in Ireland—A Photographic Guide identifies flora in freshwater habitats across the…

Saturday’s 1 pm start of the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race is the high point of the biennial Wicklow Maritime Festival, while also concluding a series of shoreside events which included a Royal Ocean Racing Club breakfast in the Royal…

On Thursday evening (20 June), during his first call-out as lifeboat helm with Youghal RNLI, Jack Nolan and his fellow crew rescued a kayaker who got into difficulty and ended up in the water near Capel Island. The lifeboat was…

The RNLI has entered a yacht in the upcoming SSE Renewables Round Ireland race, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of the charity. The race, as Ireland’s premier offshore yacht race, is held every two years and departs from Wicklow…