Six SB20s competed in Saturday's (May 13th) two AIB-Sponsored DBSC summer series racing on Dublin Bay. 

Royal Irish entry Richard Hayes in Carpe Diem was the first race winner from clubmate Ger Dempsey's Venuesworld, but this order was reversed for the second race of the day under Race Officer John McNeilly.

After six races sailed, Hayes leads overall (with five wins) and must be considered a form boat for next weekend's class East Coast Championships at the Royal St George Yacht Club, where 15 SB20s are expected to race.

Full DBSC results across all classes are below

The Sailors of Dublin Bay 21s committee have announced further details of the membership structure ahead of the upcoming inaugural season.

Weather permitting, the plan is to launch the fleet comprising Naneen, Estelle, Geraldine and Garavogue in mid-May, pending the completion of final works on the boats, and racing will commence as soon as possible thereafter.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, racing will be on Tuesdays and Saturdays from the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire with the DBSC fleet.

Based on feedback from interested racers, the committee identified various levels of interest and experience, from skippers crew and regular sailors to occasional sailors and shore supporters.

The committee therefore proposed the following membership structure:

• Annual Membership €50: become part of the Dublin Bay 21 family, receive regular updates on the restoration project and be entitled to one sailing experience per season on a 21 boat.

In addition to the membership subscription, crewing participation is available to purchase as follows:

• Regular season crew: be part of the regular crew for the boats throughout the sailing season for €450 (total €500)
• Occasional season crew: partake in up to six crewing opportunities on the boats throughout the sailing season for €200 (total €250)

Crews will be allocated their preferred dates where possible depending on overall demand for an individual slot.

The committee says they are currently finalising the booking process and a secure online payment system along with the membership application form with an update on this to come shortly.

For more information contact Sean Doyle at [email protected] or 086 232 6636.

Lindsay Casey's J97 Windjammer took the gun in Cruisers Two IRC in the third Thursday race of Dublin Bay Sailing Club's 2023 summer series on May 11th.

In a good class turnout of seven boats, the Royal St. George crew beat clubmates Brendan Foley on the First Class 8, Allig8r. Leslie Parnell, sailing the First 34.7 Black Velvet from the Royal Irish, was third.

The Race Officer was Commodore Eddie Totterdell, who ran a one-and-a-half hour race in a sub-10 knot north-easterly breeze off Dun Laoghaire Harbour, quite a contrast to the previous Thursday when strong winds and big waves scrubbed all racing.

On the one design course, Jerry Dowling's Bád/Kilcullen from the Royal Irish Yacht Club was the SB20 Race winner. The sportsboat one design class had a turnout of 7, with Dowling's clubmate Ger Dempsey second in Venuesworld and Barry Glavin's Seabiscuit third.

Full results (with corrected times for IRC classes) in all DBSC classes below

Timothy Goodbody's J109 White Mischief was the winner of the second Saturday race of the DBSC AIB summer sailing season in a fine 12-boat turnout in Cruisers IRC One.

Race Officer Barry MacNeaney, who officiated at 0800 hours for the first ISORA Cross channel race from Dun Laoghaire to Pwllheli, was back on duty on Saturday afternoon for the DBSC Cruiser fleets

Winds were ten knots from the southeast with a chop on Dublin Bay.

Second in IRC One was Goodbody's Royal Irish clubmate Colin Byrne in the XP33 Bon Exemple. Third was John Hall's J109 Something Else from the National Yacht Club.

Results in all DBSC classes below

Big seas and strong easterly winds at Dun Laoghaire Harbour caused the cancellation of tonight's Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) cruiser racing and one design keelboat racing.

DBSC Race Officer Tadgh Donnelly postponed Wednesday's (May 3) evening Water Wag dinghy race start hoping for the breeze to fill in at Dun Laoghaire harbour on Dublin Bay.

After a delay of 30 minutes, he got the 23-boat fleet away on a two-round windward/leeward race in a light, mainly southeasterly breeze.

The National Yacht Club's Cathy MacAleavey and Con Murphy sailing Mariposa (Number 45) were the race winners

DBSC Water Wag dinghy race (Wednesday, May 3) Results:

1. No. 45 Mariposa Cathy MacAleavey & Con Murphy
2. No. 42 Tortoise William & Laura Prentice
3. No. 38 Swift Guy & Jackie Kilroy

Full results below

Michael Cutliffe's Ruffles from the DMYC leads the DBSC Ruffian 23 class after the first two Saturday Series races of 2023.

Race Officer Barry O'Neill completed both races in sub-ten knot south easterlies on Dublin Bay. 

Cutliffe was the first race winner and earned a third in the day's second race, with four competing, to lead overall in the 11-boat class.

Brendan Duffy's Carmen is lying second overall, with Ann Kirwan's Bandit in third place.

As Afloat reported in January, the Ruffian 23 celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2023.

Full results in all DBSC classes are below

It’s an idea whose time first came back in 1884, and yet Dublin Bay Sailing Club remains as timely a concept as it ever was. Its official 2023 Opening Day is at Dun Laoghaire today, Saturday, April 29th, even though some DBSC evening racing has been underway since Tuesday. Yet the club is more than ever an idea. Its keenly anticipated and very informative yearbook used to be published in the Spring for all to hold and read on paper, but now it is entirely online, serving a virtual club which only becomes a reality every race day.

For sure, the club has some tangible assets in the form of the modest Race Hut on the West Pier, which works in tandem with two club Committee Boats, and they in turn work with the club’s RIBs on mark-laying, rescue and sundry other tasks. But nevertheless, DBSC exists mainly in the shared consciousness of its members and users (they’re not always synonymous), and through its extraordinary range of voluntary workers, with more than 20 Race Officers and upwards of 80 assistants. Their combined effort result in the manifestation of reality: the fleets of 18 classes racing in what amounts to a couple of regattas per week, for this is Europe’s largest local yacht-racing organisation.

“It’s not quite your usual neo-classical Dun Laoghaire waterfront bricks-and-mortar yacht club house, but it does the business” – DBSC’s West Pier Race Hut is only in place in summer.

“Utilitarian in the extreme” – the long-serving Committee Boat Mac Lir is another of the few items providing tangible evidence of the existence of Dublin Bay Sailing Club as one of Europe’s largest local yacht racing organisations

“SAILING CLUB OF THE YEAR 2021”

As such, it was able to oversee such an efficient utilisation of any relaxing of the COVID regulations that it became the “Sailing Club of the Year 2021”. But now, as we move into fresher and more free times, longtime club volunteer and officer Eddie Totterdell has succeeded Anne Kirwan as Commodore to lead the club in its time-honoured service-providing consolidation and development ethos.

Meanwhile, Ann in turn now has more time to devote to the Golden Jubilee in 2023 of her beloved Ruffian 23 Class, whose continuing good health in Dublin Bay - when it has faded at some other less steady centres - is testament to the committed and civilised nature of Irish society. For while we may enjoy some of the latest modern conveniences and innovations as much as any other people, we know a good and useful boat when we have one, and see little reason for frequent changes simply for the sake of novelty, even if evolution is something we can live with

Thus in its current umbrella form as the co-ordinating organisation for all Dun Laoghaire sailing, Dublin Bay Sailing Club is in its latest successful incarnation. It has moved on quite some distance from the 1884 group, which aimed to provide inexpensive small boat racing for young sailors who felt that their sailing needs were not being met by the three stately bricks-and-mortar clubhouses on what was then the Kingstown waterfront.

“The cream of the fleet” – DBSC racing in 1886, just two year’s after the club’s formation

Yet by the 1890s, when the new club’s Young Turks were themselves maturing to become more affluent and part of the Establishment, the rush to form One-Design classes needed some overall body. And there was Dublin Bay Sailing Club, ready and willing to step into the One-Design organisational vacuum, and ready as well to provide some overall co-ordination for the racing programme, in which regular mid-week evening races were playing an increasingly significant role and causing an accelerated increase in participating numbers.

A mighty leap. Although the founders of DBSC in 1884 were regarded as upstarts by the sailing establishment, their enthusiasm and effective organisation afloat meant that when One-Design keelboat classes started to develop in Dun Laoghaire in the late 1890s, Dublin Bay SC was seen as the natural co-ordinating body. And they started big with the Fife-designed Dublin Bay 25s in 1898 - the class is seen here at full strength around 1903, making a start through the harbour mouth, with the Viceroy Lord Dudley’s Fodhla in the foreground

All this is now so much part of the fabric of the racing programme that it feels as though Dublin Bay Sailing Club has been around ever since Dun Laoghaire Harbour itself came into being. And as public meetings of the Save Our Seafront organisation have revealed, there are citizens of Dun Laoghaire who are so attached to its elegant yet totally artificial harbour that they tend to refer to it as “this wonderful natural feature of Dublin Bay”. Quite. Yet when such a large structure is built out of Dalkey granite, that King of Rocks, then fair play to those who see the harbour in this way - and DBSC too, for that matter.

“This wonderful natural feature of Dublin Bay…” At sea level, the massive construction in Dalkey granite may make Dun Laoghaire Harbour seem to be a natural coastal feature, but an elevated view emphasises its magnificently artificial character

Yet once upon a time, Dublin Bay Sailing Club did not exist. But we can still happily remember sailing across the bay in 1984 to help them celebrate their Centenary when the Commodore was Michael O’Rahilly. Or - more properly - The O’Rahilly, if you want to be pernickety about ancient titles, though Michael himself has always been much keener on getting people sailing than he has been on asserting any rights as the Chieftain of the Clan O’Rahilly.

As your columnist happens to be the Chieftain of the Nixons of Curbah in County Cavan under an hereditary system worked out by my ingenious predecessor Uncle George (who lived to be 103), I can only agree that holding such titles is of doubtful tangible benefit. For we have occasionally driven through Ballyjamesduff in the hope of finding our Land Agent waiting on the town boundary with a Gladstone bag stuffed with rents, but so far have failed for some inscrutable reason to make lucrative contact of any sort.

Back in 1984, you had to be on the right side of Commodore The O’Rahilly and his Glen OD to get the clear message about the DBSC Centenary Party in Sandycove. Photo: W M Nixon

Thus ensuring that DBSC celebrated its Centenary with style was probably much more useful than asserting ancient titles, and Michael O’Rahilly’s sense of the significance of Dublin Bay Sailing Club back in 1984 and the importance of properly marking its Centenary played a key role in increasing the club’s sense of itself, which has carried it through so well that if you were a mathematician of a certain type, you’d be insisting that this year they should be celebrating their 140th year with some added fanfare.

But of course it will be next year when the 140th birthday will be celebrated, and it should be muted enough, as the 150th in ten years time will be something very special, for these days with Rosemary Roy in charge of the engine room through being Honorary Secretary, this potentially unwieldy entity is running like a well-oiled machine.

CLASS AUTONOMY ENCOURAGED

Nowadays the club caters for so many classes that they’re encouraged in their autonomy within the DBSC marquee. But the tradition of encouraging classes generally continues, and it was still at a very hands-on level during the 1930s. Thus the initial germ of the idea of the John B Kearney-designed 17ft Mermaid OD was first aired in 1932 even though it was 1936 before the class was fully in being. But by the late 1940s and through the 1950s, it was one of the most popular club ODs in Ireland.

Dublin Bay Mermaids racing in their annual National Championship in Foynes. Although first conceived in Dun Laoghaire in 1932, the class’s strongest fleets are now to be found elsewhere. Photo: Tony Quinlivan

Then too, while it was at a Committee Meeting of the Royal Alfred Yacht Club in 1934 that the idea of a new 24ft LWL bermudan rigged OD was first aired by Lord Glenavy, owner of the DB21 Garavogue in a class which originated in 1902-03, the fact that in due course the RAYC would eventually be combined into DBSC was anticipated as long ago as 1937, when DBSC took up the idea of the new boat and developed it to become the DB24 class This was and is a versatile classic which was so effective, both inshore and offshore, that in 1963 one of the DB24s was to provide renowned designer Alfred Mylne with his only overall win in an RORC Race.

The restored and re-rigged Dublin Bay 21 Garavogue on her way to a win in Dublin Bay. Photo: Jillly Goodbody 

Even more remarkably, Garavogue is still very much in existence, now sailing under the new gunter sloop rig as devised by Hal Sisk and Fionan de Barra in their project to restore the Dublin Bay 21 Class. And we can also see the continuing existence of the Dublin Bay 24s, through the elegant presence of the restored Periwinkle (David Espey & Chris Craig). 

The restored Dublin Bay 24 Periwinkle racing off Dun Laoghaire. In 1963 her sister-ship Fenestra (Stephen O’Mara, skippered by Arthur Odbert) was overall winner of the stormy 220-mile RORC Morecambe Bay Race in the Irish Sea. Photo: W M Nixon 

This wealth of living history as a normal part of the Dublin Bay sailing scene is to be celebrated with a proposed Grand Parade of Sail on the morning of Sunday July 2nd, going around the East Pier and along the coast of Sandycove to the Forty Foot, for all Dun Laoghaire boats and classes more than fifty years old. With co-ordination and commentary by Hal Sisk in his capacity as Chairman of the International Association of Yachting Historians, it’s an intriguing way of illustrating Dun Laoghaire’s unrivalled sailing history. But by the time that happens, Dublin Bay Sailing Club will already have logged very many races in its crowded 2023 programme.

Former DBSC Commodore Ann Kirwan racing her champion Ruffian 23 Bandit. With their Golden Jubilee being celebrated this year, the Ruffian 23s are eligible to participate in the proposed Grand Parade of Sail at Dun Laoghaire on Sunday July 2nd.

You get the best idea of the scale of it all at the annual prize-giving in November, which is nothing less than a marathon. Silverware is shifted in industrial quantities as further tangible evidence of the very real existence of a virtual club which honours the past, lives in the present, and keenly anticipates the future. Here’s the Afloat.ie report on the successful riders and runners from 2022. 

View the 2023 DBSC yearbook on the DBSC website here

Colin Byrne's XP33 'Bon Exemple' took the gun in Cruisers One IRC in the first Thursday race of Dublin Bay Sailing Club's 2023 summer series on Thursday night (27 April).

In a fine turnout of ten boats, the Royal Irish's Byrne crew outwitted clubmates Tim Goodbody and Barry Cunnigham, sailing the J109's White Mischief and Blast on Chimaera.

Race Officer Barry McNeaney ran a one-and-a-half hour race in a sub-10 knot south-easterly breeze off Dun Laoghaire Harbour. 

On the one design course, Niall Coleman's Flyer from the National Yacht Club was the first Flying Fifteen Race winner. The biggest one design DBSC keelboat class had a turnout of 12 from an entry of 27, with DMYC's Neil Colin second in Ffuzzy and Philip Lawton third in Puffling.

Full results (with corrected times for IRC classes) in all DBSC classes below

The Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) summer racing season got a kick start with a Pre-Season Race Training Day initiative for its keelboat classes on Saturday.

Conditions were light and shifty and a bit misty on the bay, so perhaps not optimum for race training, but there was still plenty of opportunity for video footage on mark roundings, start line tactics and sail trim.

Held in conjunction with UK Sailmakers, the Offshore Racing Academy, and INSS, the session was held by Sailmaker Barry Hayes and offshore sailor Kenny Rumball.

A variety of craft participated with J80s, Beneteau 211s, J109s, 31.7s and some of the bigger DBSC Cruisers Zero too.

UK Sailmakers and Irish Offshore Academy crew were on the water, observing and videoing boats in different race scenarios such as start lines, beating to the weather mark as pictured here with the DBSC Class Zero entry, the First 40, Prima Forte Photo: Afloat

The morning started in light airs with a briefing followed by on-the-water training, including windward leeward course simulations.

The team looked at improving performance based on what they saw on the water.