Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

After the champagne conditions enjoyed by the ten Fireballs that contested the Ulsters on Belfast Lough on the weekend just past, a marginally smaller fleet of eight boats had slightly less glamorous conditions on Scotsman’s Bay in Dun Laoghaire last…

Just before the presentation of prizes got underway yesterday at the Fireball Ulster Championships in the Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club at Cultra the race officer Alistair Hunter asked to say a few words. It was one of those…

Last weekend saw ten boats and some 25 Fireball participants join the ISA supported training session with former Olympic 470 sailor Ger Owens at the DMYC. Ger had a hard act to follow as previous Fireball training sessions had been…

The traditional summer season opener for the Irish Fireball Class, the Training Weekend, takes place the weekend after next, 16th & 17th April and will be hosted by the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club. In a departure from previous years,…

The 45th hosting of the Frostbite Series in the 51 years of the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club came to a close yesterday in sunshine and light wind conditions and a turnout of seven Fireballs in a very busy Dun Laoghaire…

With the normal Fireball scribes for the Frostbite racing in Northern Ireland for the day and in the Caribbean for at least a week, the reporting of the penultimate Sunday of the 2015/16 Frostbite Series fell on Neil Colin. Neil reports thus;…

There was almost a full turnout of the Fireballs registered for the 2015/16 Frostbites in Dun Laoghaire yesterday when 10 boats assembled on the start line for the first of two trapezoid-course races in sunshine but cool temperatures writes Cormac…

In a winter where we have lost races to howling gales, yesterday offered the Frostbite Fireballs an easier day on the water with a modest 4 – 7 knots of breeze on according to the weather station inside the harbour writes…

Only four Fireballs risked romantic disharmony by taking part in today’s Frostbite racing in Dun Laoghaire harbour writes Cormac Bradley. Or maybe it was the weather that put people off, because even the organisers were warning about the weather –…

A unique gathering of Irish Fireballers drawn from five decades brought back memories of a golden age for dinghies when over 200 sailors met at a refurbished Royal St. George Yacht Club last Saturday night in Dun Laoghaire. The evening drew together Fireball…

Fireball sailors are reeling in the years next Saturday (6th February) night when they stage a fifty year reunion of the international class at the Royal St. George Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. The 16–foot dinghy class, for so long…

A review of Met Eireann’s Sea Area forecast on Saturday might have persuaded those who contest Dun Laoghaire’s Frostbites, that there would be little point in going to the harbour on Sunday afternoon – the forecast was for Force6/7 winds.…

Reading XCWeather’s predictions for Sunday afternoon’s Fireball Frostbite racing, one might have expected to be under pressure from the conditions that were being forecast – at 15:00 the projected wind strength was 16 knots with gusts of 23 knots from…

By any reasonble logic it should not have been possible to sail in Dun Laoghaire today Sunday for the final race in part one of the Frostbite Series. Wind Guru was predicting gusts of forty knots and there was nothing…

Eleven Fireballs lined up on a dank light air day afternoon today to contest the penultimate race in the first DMYC series in Dun Laoghaire Harbour. Sadly the wind did not live up to the billing suggested on Wind Guru…

The weather gods looked kindly upon the DMYC frostbite series today Sunday and a good sized mixed fleet of dinghies slipped out during the very welcome weather window for a single race inside the harbour. Eight Fireballs lined up for…