Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Skerries RNLI launched to the rescue of a man and two teenagers in the water after their currach capsized off the north Co Dublin town yesterday evening (Saturday 21 September). Just after 5pm, Dublin Coast Guard picked up a Mayday…

In 1828, when the recently re-named and still only semi-finished harbour of Kingstown on Dublin Bay staged its first regatta, it certainly gave an indication of the transformed place’s potential for waterborne sport. Yet it was not until 1831 that…

I won’t be challenging Hal Sisk’s confident declaration that he is Chairman of “the world’s oldest cruiser-racer class!” His offer to anyone to challenge him sounded across Kilrush Boatyard to where I had driven over 400 kilometres from Cork to…

Once thought impossible due to the entire seven boat fleet rotting in a County Wicklow farmyard, the first revived Dublin Bay 21 'Naneen' was revealed yesterday at Kilrush Boatyard in County Clare.  The Hal Sisk led project has been working…

A tremendous welcome was extended to the Rankin Dinghy Class by Royal Cork Yacht Club last weekend at its DinghyFest Regatta. The largest fleet of Rankins ever gathered for the event. 21 boats assembled in the dinghy park, with 20…

This past summer’s successful Salmon’s Wake voyage by Limerick’s 56t traditional ketch Ilen to Greenland worked productively in many ways in high mountains, on the sea, and in ports where the crew interacted with Greenlanders on several cultural programmes. But…

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…