We all know that drink was invented to stop the Irish ruling the world. But on the same theme, the Irish sailing community has always quietly nurtured the thought that if our usual weather could just be somehow modified to provide some real summer sunshine with our useful sailing breezes, then that – combined with the inevitable world-beating après sailing – would make Ireland tops as an international sailing venue.

When IRL means In Real Life…..2Farr for Hawaii (ex Rush) wins the Half  Ton Classics in Norway, Harmony (beyond) for Howth came third in a fleet of forty boats

Well, we’ve no excuses now. And even if Global Warming has meant that some of our farmers have experienced conditions too sunny and dry to provide their best hay, out on the ocean sailors and their many dedicated voluntary race organisers have indeed been making hay while the sun shines. And ashore, the lingering warmth of the velvet nights has made us realise that, in the average summer, we’re actually Spaniard and Italians left out in the rain. 

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING?

In fact, the good weather has lately been verging on too much of a good thing, but while some areas had little wind, there was a fine breeze for last weekend’s Cruinnui na mBhad at Kinvara in the southeast corner of Galway Bay.  But as some of the signs indicate that the latter part of this weekend will see the approach of precipitation plus, we’ve no doubt that local sailing & socialising festivals - like the Gibney Classic at Malahide today, and the annual regatta at Glandore tomorrow, and the SOD regattas which concluded at Dromineer on Lough Derg yesterday evening - will see all the stops being pulled out to provide a local spin on the mood engendered at majors such as Bangor Regatta on Belfast Lough, Cork Week at Crosshaven, and Calves Week at Schull.   

People’s pedestrianisation – the prize-giving for Calves Week at Schull is street theatre

Of course, at a stratospheric sort of level, a World Championship for a recognised international class tops any pyramid of a week’s sailing activity. Thus the past six days of the GP14 Worlds 2026 at the Royal North of Ireland YC at Cultra on Belfast Lough have been hitting fresh heights, with a certain dizziness of mood following the fabulous success of the Fleadh in Belfast just a very few miles up the road.

But even without such a mood-raiser to usher in the sailing, how is it that a 1949 design like the GP14 could guarantee a turnout of a hundred boats from clubs large and small, and sailing centres of all types and sizes? 

For a 1949 design, the GP14 Worlds at Cultra on Belfast Lough has demonstrated remarkable boat and class resilience

The answer seems to be a strong and enthusiastically supported class association, with an even stronger ethos of voluntary work.

And it all has to be done with a true sense of democracy, and acceptance of the ultimately discerned group will.

For sure, democracy can be a less-than-perfect system of administration. But for running a boat class, it happens to be better than any other method, provided that everyone respects the basic rules of the game and the class.

SHANNON SYSTEM

Thus one of the reliable staples of the first half of August for Irish sailing is the way that the Shannon One Designs use the first week for racing day after day at Lough Ree, and then the second week for being down-Shannon and racing at Dromineer with Lough Derg Yacht Club.  

One hundred and four years and still going strong - Shannon One Designs on a one-reef day. Photo: SODA

Built into this is the expectation and assumption that the Annual General Meeting of this 104-year-old class will be held on the Thursday of Lough Derg Week. And so it has come to pass, with the added convenience that those in the wider membership who can’t make it to Dromineer can contribute via Zoom.  

HEALTHY INTERACTION

There’s this abiding sense of a healthy interaction between lake and sea and land, and there are few places that manage it better than Greencastle in Donegal, right on the entrance to Lough Foyle. It’s known primarily as a fishing port, but the harbour has been extended so it can host a Maritime Festival that reflects a meaningful relationship between sea and land sports.

Greencastle in Donegal has organically evolved into an ideal location for a true sea-land Maritime Festival

In other words, it’s right in line with our philosophy – mission statement if you insist – here at Afloat.ie, which basically is about getting the people of Ireland to think about sailing the sea as a natural part of national life, rather than an oddball carry-on indulged in by headcases and a self-aggrandising elite.

For this to happen successfully, it seems to work best when harbours and sailing centres have expanded and developed – evolved if you wish - in an organic kind of way. Big overall everything-happens-at-once schemes seem oddly lifeless, as has happened at the massive Portland Harbour on the south coast of England.

There, the locals prefer the homely fishport mood of Weymouth or the natural charms of Poole Harbour to such an extent that the word is you’ll hear nothing but Welsh accents in the new-ish Olympic Marina in Portland, as the utterly massive tidal range of South Wales is such that the relatively short overland hop to Portland provides Welsh sailors with a preferable set of options on the Dorset coast.

That may of course be a completely out-of-date version of how things are now at Portland. But it’s somewhere that springs to mind when we contemplate the current version of the huge national dinghy sailing centre proposed for building around Ballyholme Yacht Club on Ballyholme Bay on the eastern waterfront of what I still can’t think of as the City of Bangor.

The Power & the Glory – the mighty Colmcille sweeps in to the finish at Kinvara Photo: Declan McKinney GBSC

Back in the day, when we were learning our sailing in un-supervised style at Ballyholme YC, the main building was still a tiny place, but in any case the feral youths who crashed about the bay in motley craft tended to gravitate towards the boatman’s hut, which was like a film set packed with traditional marine equipment and smelling very agreeably of Stockholm tar and the ferocious tobacco smoked by Con the boatman.

Going for it at Kinvara, with An Tonai chasing St Michael. Photo: Declan McKinney GBSC 

The unsupervised learning of sailing was basic. If you capsized and the adult world got to hear of it, you’d be hauled up before the general committee, and some incredibly pompous old fart would maunder on about “damned bad seamanship” for what seemed like hours.

You’d then be lucky if you only got banned from using the club for a month. One hardened capsizer claims he was banned for a whole year. But as he subsequently was awarded premier trophies of leading cruising clubs for oceanic voyages and detailed coastal cruises where he ran the risk of being devoured by saltwater crocodiles, I suppose it could be argued that the system worked in a perverse kind of way.

“It just growed and growed” – the proposed development at Ballyholme is a very long way from the original small clubhouse and even smaller boatman’s hut

Be that as it may, we’ve no idea how many of that rather special group of young tearaways from days of yore will still be around when the new-style Ballyholme Pupil-Pampering Sailing Setup is fully operational. But it seems to be on such a scale that people of more civilised tastes will be glad of the mood-escaping option of the Royal Ulster Yacht Club in all its stately arts-and-crafts dignity just around the corner, a handy escape hatch to another world.

“A handy escape hatch to another world” – the rainbow lights on the Vincent Craig-designed Royal Ulster YC building, which provided a sort of instant antiquity on the Bangor seafront when it opened in 1899. It’s interesting to compare the W B Yeats Centre in Sligo, which was originally the town’s Belfast Banking Company premises, and also designed by Craig.  Photo: RUYC

Back in the day, it had the wonderful permanent aroma of brandy and cigars, and even in the most austere of times, a weekly poker school would play through the night until the club steward, assiduously attending to their needs for drink and sustenance, would announce in the early morning light that the Liverpool ferry had just appeared round Ballymacormick Point, upon which the poker game was immediately stopped and the steward was entitled to everything in the pot.

FADING FROM THE SCENE

So it goes on, with members of the scene disappearing from the carousel. In recent days, our little team has faced the gentle demise of Pippa. She came to us 14 years ago as a tiny miniature Jack Russell puppy. By the age of two, she was convinced she had lost all canine characteristics and was actually a little person. By the time she was four, we agreed that she was a little person. Indeed, when she reached six, there were times when she was the only adult in the room. When the mood of the house was good, she was positively ecstatic in her danced delight. She was a gallant little soul. She had a good life, well lived. We miss her. 

“A gallant little soul”.  There were times when Pippa was the only adult in the room