Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Noel Butler and Stephen Oram retained their Fireball Ulster champions title after five races at Newtownards SC at the weekend. The event took place under something of a weather cloud – the forecast for the weekend was not good –…

Barry McCartin and Conor Kinsella are the new Fireball National Championships after eight races in Dublin Bay over the weekend. Second-placed at the event, hosted by the DMYC, were Noel Butler and Stephen Oram while the Thompson brothers Daniel and…

Royal St.George's Barry McCartin and Conor Kinsella head into the last day of racing at the Fireball National Championships with one hand on the trophy. The championships are being hosted by the DMYC at Dun Laoghaire Harbour.  As regular Afloat…

Thirteen Fireballs rocked up to the start line for the Fireball Leinster Championships at Skerries SC at the weekend. Daniel Thompson (Wexford SC) sailing with Barry McCartin (Sat) and Ronan Wallace (Sun) won the event after 6 races over two…

On May 13th (not a Friday) Dun Laoghaire based Fireball sailor Frank Miller got the following WhatsApp message from Turkey - " Cong - Galway Race on Saturday 26 June. Can we do that? Pleaaasee :))". The message was from…

Although Ireland's biggest regatta was cancelled next month due to the ongoing uncertainty over Covid, some positive news for Dublin Bay sailing is that eight of the 11 regional and national championships that were to run as part of the Volvo…

So, as the sun rises hopefully on a welcome return to international regattas, the Irish Fireball Class, in tandem with Fireball International and the Lough Derg Yacht Club are delighted to announce that the World Championships of the Class with…

Eight Fireball teams participated in an intensive coaching session at the DMYC with Barry McCartin at the weekend. The Dun Laoghaire Harbour based coaching was as intensive as training gets with a huge variety of conditions from near calm to…

With no Frostbite dinghy racing to distract us over the winter, everyone is yearning to get their feet wet in a Fireball so understandably there was a healthy audience for an online training session last Thursday night. The coaching was…

Impatience with the ongoing pandemic has led the Irish Fireball Association to bring forward its first coaching session of the season with Barry McCartin. The session will now take place as a Zoom Webinar on Thursday, March 4th. The plan…

One of Dublin Bay's great sailing characters Jimmy Fitzpatrick of the Royal Irish Yacht Club has sadly passed away. A true corinthian of sailing Jimmy Fitz was very well known both here and abroad. While he sailed out of the…

The Irish Fireball Class Association held its AGM a few weeks back, and we had one individual who chose to take a break from the committee but compensated for that with the addition of a number of new members. Hermine…

With the triennial elections for Fireball International now completed and all the Executive positions currently filled, FI is once more ready to chart a way forward for the Class. This year's elections saw a number of stalwarts of the Class…

As Zoom is the lingua franca of our online communications these days, twenty-odd Fireballers congregated on the online platform on Thursday night past, 29th October, for the Class AGM. A 40-minute session certainly concentrated the mind for a prompt meeting,…

It was a lively day of racing for Fireballs during the NYC 150th Race Day today at Dun Laoghaire Harbour. While the class was dismayed to hear that racing would be confined to the harbour the wind gods smiled on…

At a time when the Irish Fireball fleet should have been in Howth, welcoming Fireballers from all over the World to the 2020 Fireball World Championships, a 13-boat fleet was contesting what we think is the first National Championship to…