The current star-studded ILCA 7 Worlds in Dublin Bay, featuring a remarkable 142-boat 43-nation championship project co-hosted by the Royal St George YC and the National YC, has further focused international sailing’s attention on a venue which is already well-lodged in the thinking of sailing’s global administrators.
For as recently as November 2025, World Sailing’s Annual Conference was hosted in Dun Laoghaire. And the ready availability of appropriate clubhouses and other meeting and hospitality centres - all within a compact nautical location - successfully met many demands, including the honouring of the late great Charlie Dalin as the Rolex Male Sailor of the Year.
The Royal St George YC Clubhouse, where Charlie Dalin became Rolex Sailor of the Year in November 2025. Photo: Afloat.ie
DYNAMIC INTERACTION NOT ALWAYS PRESENT
Yet even though Dun Laoghaire’s totally artificial harbour celebrated the Bicentenary in 2017 of the beginning of its massive construction back in 1817 with a very special edition of the Bicentennial Dun Laoghaire Regatta, this increasingly vigorous dynamic interaction between town and harbour has not always been an obvious feature of waterfront life.
In fact, it’s probably a typically Irish situation that the original concept of an asylum harbour for unwieldy sailing ships caught out in onshore gales in Dublin Bay was based on the policy of minimum interaction between ships and shore.
The maritime controllers and military administrators wished only to ensure that their troopships and suchlike didn’t get wrecked, and they were totally against their crew having any R&R ashore.
Dun Laoghaire’ massive artificial harbour from seaward. Its sense of total completion in granite discourages any change
“HARBOUR ROTS SHIPS AND RUINS MEN’
Their attitude was that harbour rots ships and ruins men. So they preferred to think that sheltering ships lying to their anchors in the lee of the new breakwater were fully maintaining the discipline of being at sea, and would get under way again as soon as possible.
Once such an attitude has taken hold in the administrative sub-conscious, it’s amazing how it can persist down the generations. But in the real world of ordinary people struggling to make a living or keep a business going, the actual state of affairs gradually manifests itself.
The entrance to the harbour in the mid 1800s as portrayed by Richard Brydges Beechey, with a man-of-war at mid-harbour heading seawards in order to comply with the Government’s view that any sheltering in port should be of minimum time
PRIVATELY-OWNED CROSS-CHANNEL FERRIES
Thus by 1821, privately-owned steam-driven packet boats were using the new piers to operate as cross-channel ferries to the old ferryport at Parkgate on the Dee Estuary near Chester in England, and increasingly to the slowly-developing but much nearer harbour at Holyhead on the west coast of Anglesey in Wales.
Then with the sailing-mad Marquess of Anglesey as Ireland’s Viceroy, the first Dublin Bay regatta from what was now Kingstown was staged in 1828, and by 1831 the Marquess was first Commodore of the first yacht club, the Royal Irish.
FIRST CLUBHOUSE
But the Royal Irish YC did not have a clubhouse as such beside the new harbour, which by 1834 had taken over from Howth as the official Mailboat Port for the Government packet ships. That honour of the first clubhouse went to a club with clubhouse established in Kingstown in 1838 by a breakaway group of the Pembroke Rowing Cub.
The Pembroke Rowing Club continued for many years to operate from the mouth of the River Dodder on the south shore of the River Liffey in Dublin Port, but in Dun Laoghaire its group of breakaway group Young Turks found their organisation expanding by leaps and bounds, until it had very quickly become the all-powerful Royal St George Yacht Club.
The entrance to the harbour in the mid 1800s as portrayed by Richard Brydges Beechey, with a man-of-war at mid-harbour heading seawards in order to comply with the Government’s view that any sheltering in port should be of minimum time
Dun Laoghaire Harbour from he southeast, with the National Yacht Club in the foreground corner.
Despite the Viceroy’s support of the sport of sailing from Kingstown Harbour, the civil servants responsible for the harbour year in, year out, were stubbornly and confidently aware that they were a semi-permanent fixture, whereas Viceroys could come and go at the whim of the government in London. That certainly was the experience with Lord Anglesey, whose subsequent sailing profile – after a few brief years in Dublin - was with the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes where, in 1848, he donated the trophy that became the America’s Cup in 1851.
NATURALLY CONSERVATIVE
But back in Kingstown/Dun Laoghaire, the naturally conservative civil servants, who had the running of the new harbour as just one of their many duties in those days of minimal staffing, still had it lodged in their collective minds – their groupthink, if you prefer – that there should be as little direct interaction as possible between ships in port and the nearby world ashore.
Thus the view from Dublin of the powers that be was that Kingstown – quickly accessed from the city by the new railway since 1834 – was an increasingly attractive seaside town which happened to have a harbour beside it, but it most emphatically was not a port town in any meaningful sense of the word, even if ferry activity steadily increased over the years.
The 1884-formed Dublin Bay Sailing Club racing in 1886. Within 14 years of its foundation, the “homeless” club was the leading authority in Dublin Bay sailing development
DUBLIN BAY SAILING CLUB MAKES A REAL DIFFERENCE
It’s arguable that this was an attitude shared by Kingstown’s sailing elite, for whom exclusivity from the hoi polloi was central to their mindset. But in 1870 the formation of the Corinthian-minded Royal Alfred Yacht Club, with its rule that for racing the only professionals allowed on board were the steward and a ladies’ maid, was leading to a more liberal attitude. And in 1884 the founding of Dublin Bay Sailing Club, to provide sailing and racing manly for the ordinary people of the town, really did begin a revolution such that by the mid 1890s, Dublin Bay Sailing Club was in effect the overall authority for sailing from Dun Laoghaire.
One of Dublin Bay SC’s successful classes was the DB21, introduced in 1902 with this rig, and recently revived and re-built with a slightly less challenging rig by Hal Sisk and Fionan de Barra
But though attitudes may change, sometimes with remarkable rapidity, those who hoped to develop a livelier interaction between town and harbour were faced with the fact that the harbour as finally completed around 1870 was very complete indeed. In other words, making any significant changes to facilities already provided by this massive granite monolith was a formidable task.
DINGHY PARK CHALLENGE
Thus as modern dry-sailing of dinghies kept in clubside dinghy parks began to develop in the mid-20th Century, it proved quite a challenge to find space around the yacht clubs for a boat park.
Then too, the almost-waterfront railway line provided a natural barrier which underlines the separation of town and harbour. These problems have had to be overcome by some ingenious examples of civil engineering and the occasional hard-fought planning court case. But gradually – sometimes ever so slowly - Dun Laoghaire is increasingly seen as a major harbour town of increasing value as recreational boating expands beyond sailing and rowing.
NATIONAL WATERSPORT CAMPUS
Thus throughout July 2026 we have already had the Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Council’s Consultation Process on the proposed new Dun Laoghaire-located National Watersports Campus, following on from the signing of the initiating contract in May 2025.
At the signing of the preliminary contract for the proposed National Watersports Campus in Dun Laoghaire were: Front Row (l to r): Tim Bourke (CEO Irish Sailing), Gareth McGuire (Reddy Architects and Urbanism), Councillor Jim O’Leary (Cathaoirlach DLR), Frank Curran (Chief Executive DLR), Paul Kennedy (DLR) Back row (l to r): David O’Brien (Afloat.ie), Brian Craig (Irish Sailing), Tim Ryan (DLR), & Peter Buckley (DLR) Photo: DLRCC
DEMOCRACY IS HARD WORK
This may seem a slow pace when compared with the way large public works schemes could be brought on line in times past, but the reality is that successfully maintaining a democracy is hard work, and everyone involved has to be aware of the many delaying factors inbuilt within the proper process.
Yet as we look out across Dublin Bay this morning, where one of the supreme events in the world sailing calendar is drawing to its close this weekend, it is with the realization that a key part of the future of sailing and other watersports in Ireland is an aspiration to Centres of Excellence, and all logic points to such a centre being established in Dun Laoghaire for the mutual benefit of town and watersports alike.
Water Wags exit the harbour in racing mode. When introduced in 1900, these Mark 2 Water Wags were intended to lie to moorings as dinghy parking space was either limited or non-existent at the waterfront clubs.
SYMBOLISING DUN LAOGHAIRE AND DUBLIN BAY
As for what the symbol of this new aspect of Dun Laoghaire will be, the options are open. The two unique Poolbeg smokestacks have been taken as the logo for the ILCA 7 Worlds 2026, but it could be argued that this is essentially the impression of Dublin Bay as viewed from Dun Laoghaire, whereas those of us sailing to Dun Laoghaire from other places tend to think of the welcoming lighthouse at the end of the East Pier is the symbol of the harbour.
The Poolbeg Smokestacks are now travelling the world
After all, if you’re considering photographs of sailing in the Solent, you’ll do everything possible to keep the tall structures of the Fawley Oil refinery on the north shore out of the background, and will almost inevitably find that the bright canopy on the Royal Yacht Squadron or the singular tower of The Needles lighthouse become iconic symbol in the same way that the Eiffel Tower serves Paris, Tower Bridge is London, and the Statue of Liberty is New York.
It could only be Dun Laoghaire – DB24 Periwinkle and 1897 Richardson cutter Myfanwy racing into Dun Laoghaire Harbou past the East Pier lighthouse. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O’Brien
So as Dun Laoghaire and Dublin Bay move up the rankings of places of world sailing significance, let’s hear it for the East Pier Lighthouse as the symbol of this developing role.
Campus Vision — The proposed Coal Harbour Watersports Building is a centrepiece of plans for the National Watersports Campus in Dún Laoghaire Harbour, envisioned as Ireland's first purpose-built multi-watersport facility.
Flying the Flag — National Watersports Campus flags fly over Dún Laoghaire during the ILCA 7 World Championships, heralding plans for the harbour's next chapter as an international sailing and watersports centre.
