Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

The rapidly-developing partnership between solo offshore veteran Alex Thomson and proven star of fully-crewed boats Nin O’Leary of Cork has been the focus of much attention this week as they visit Cork and Dun Laoghaire. Thomson’s eye-catching IMOCA 60 Hugo…

Over a number of years, the numbers of Water Wag competing in club racing, on Wednesday evenings, has been bucking the national trend, by increasing in numbers of competitors. Hal Sisk, the 2017 Captain of the Water Wags, decided that…

In his poem Sailing to Byzantium (1928), William Butler Yeats immortalised the vision of Ireland as “no country for old men”. Expressed so well, the idea took hold and has been re-used internationally in novels and films, even if in Ireland…

“For many people yacht ownership is enough. They buy a boat and they keep it in a marina and they don’t go sailing very often and they go there for picnics and so on, but for some people you can…

Heritage week runs from 19th to 27th August, and the Water Wags are part of Ireland’s heritage, and thus the race for 23rd. August was a Heritage Week event. The wind blew force four at the beginning, so, some of…

If variety is the spice of life, then the 25th Anniversary Glandore Classics Regatta is currently staging the most vibrant and flavoursome boat show on the Irish coast writes W M Nixon. Admittedly the mid-week routine, which will lead on…

With just twelve days to go to the start of the 25th Anniversary Glandore Classic Boat Regatta 2017 from July 23rd to July 28th, Glandore Harbour Yacht Club are swinging all systems into action with the extra muscle provided by…

It could be over 50 years since a cotton topsail has been seen from the National Yacht Club and this afternoon as the classic fleet arrived "Peggy Bawn", a GL Watson 36–ft Cutter, built in 1894, hoisted her cotton suit…

For the second handicap race of the year, for The Buckingham Cup and The Wigham Trophy, the Dun Laoghaire Water Wags were discommoded by a 9,975 ton, 440ft long cruise liner, The Star Pride with her 208 passengers and 164…

The Collen Cup is a new perpetual trophy which has been in the Collen family since 1907 and will be awarded to the overall winner of the Water Wag Class within the Classic section of this and subsequent Volvo Dun…

When you’ve an inland sea well filled with islands, the tides running between them are bound to be quite strong from time to time writes W M Nixon. After the second day of the Morbihan Festival of Sail, the veteran…

It’s probably more than a little sacrilegious to suggest that, as some of the rituals of a global religion are built around The Last Supper, then it’s not at all unreasonable for the world’s oldest One-Design sailing class to have…

Over the next few days fourteen Water Wags will head by ferry to France to participate in one of the greatest classic boat regattas in Europe. As Afloat.ie reported previously, one thousand four hundred and forty two traditional workboats and…

Yesterday evening the Water Wags raced for the Buckingham Cup & Wigham Trophy with handicaps applied at the start, resulting in some boats starting five and a half minutes ahead of others. The handicaps were allocated on the basis of…

Within Dublin Bay there currently are twenty-one classes of racing yachts. It might come as a surprise to many, that currently the largest class is Dublin Bay is the Water Wag class with 33 boats entered for the 2017 season.…

For the second week in a row, the wind in Dun Laoghaire blew from the north. This time the wind of 12 -15 knots kicked up quite a chop within the harbour, which some competitors found challenging. In the130th season…