Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Cork city’s community and traditional boatyard Meitheal Mara has put out a call for those new to Ireland for its latest boat building project. The new 12-week programme will see participants have a direct hand in building their own traditional…

Ardmore is a lovely village on the Waterford coastline, not far from Youghal. It’s a seaside resort and was once a busy fishing village, though that period has largely passed. The meaning of its name in Irish is ‘Great Height’…

The Limerick ketch Ilen returned safely from Greenland to berth at an Irish quayside for the first time in more than two months when, at 0400hrs this morning, skipper Paddy Barry and his crew brought the 56ft 1926-built “little ship”…

This 12-foot class was designed in 1913 by George Cockshott, an English yacht designer, as the British Racing Association ‘A’ Class. The class was adopted by the International Yacht Racing Union on 1st. January 1920 and thus it became the…

When Conor O’Brien returned from his round the world voyage in Saoirse to Dun Laoghaire in 1925, it was all carefully choreographed so that he arrived in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, and the DBSC fleet, having abandoned their…

There’ll be opportunities in Limerick and Greenland for young people to learn more of what the two Transatlantic voyages – outward and return - of the 56ft traditional ketch Ilen have discovered and explained, with schools now resumed after the…

The Facebook page for Carlingford Lough has shared a remarkable find from the lough by subsea divers — an anchor believed to have been lost from a sailing ship more than a century ago. It’s understood the anchor was discovered…

The 56ft traditional ketch Ilen under the command of Paddy Barry has been making excellent progress since departing Greenland on Sunday evening, and is already halfway home to Ireland along the 1200 mile passage from Prince Christian Sund writes W…

Limerick’s restored 56ft Conor O’Brien-designed 1926-built traditionally-rigged trading ketch Ilen emerged yesteray evening (Sunday) from the eastern end of Prince Christian Sound to start her passage back to Ireland writes W M Nixon. The magnificent Sound - noted for its dramatic…

The traditional restored 56ft trading ketch Ilen of Limerick, under the command of Paddy Barry, is serenely continuing her progress homewards along Greenland’s southwest coast despite that rugged and sparsely-populated coastline suddenly becoming global news, thanks to the revelation that…

They say bad news travels fast. But the news that the 48ft 1905-built yawl Iolaire has been lost, after an inadvertent gybe in heavy weather drove her onto rocks – fortunately without loss of life or injury - off Ibiza…

New research has found that the population of Ireland was in decline for almost 200 years before the Vikings settled. The research from Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Natural and Built Environment is the first of its kind and has…

The theme of this week's National Heritage Week for 2019 is ‘Pastimes'. In recognition of this, the 113-year-old Water Wag dinghy‘Pansy,’ will be put on public display on the East Pier, Dun Laoghaire on Dublin Bay on Tuesday 20th August…

The 1926-built restored 56ft Limerick trading ketch Ilen has completed the varied shoreside and coastal aspects of her research voyage to Greenland writes W M Nixon. This took her as far north as Ilulissat beyond the Arctic Circle to give…

When the late Tony Moylan cajoled the notion of Cruinnui na mBad at Kinvara into being in 1979, times were different writes W M Nixon. The idea was to celebrate the Gathering of the Boats in the old days, when…

The Galway man who is regarded as a leading light in the revival of interest in Irish turf trading craft has been immortalised in his home harbour writes Lorna Siggins Figurative sculptor John Coll has designed a plaque depicting the…