On Friday evening (November 8th), the National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire, in the impressively re-purposed Mariners' Church, hosted the Annual Prize-Giving of an internationally significant sailing club which, despite being all of 140 years old, is only ranked fifth in terms of seniority among the yacht and sailing clubs that call Dun Laoghaire home.
For the Royal Irish Yacht Club (1831), the Royal St George Yacht Club (1838) and the Royal Alfred and National Yacht Clubs (both of 1870) were already well there – three with their Royal Warrants firmly in place - before Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) set up its cheeky stall in 1884 to provide proper racing in the Bay for "boats too small to be considered seriously by the established clubs".
A pivotal time in sailing development in the mid 1960s, when Dublin Bay Sailing Club had to deal with new materials and highly-innovative boat-building series production methods, while keeping classic boats and traditionally-minded members on side. The future is stylishly announced by the Springtime launching in Dun Laoghaire of John Sisk Senr's new GRP Italian-built Sparkman & Stephens-designed Alpha 36 Sarnia, while beyond (dark blue) is the bow of Paul Campbell's 37ft Arthur Robb-designed yawl Verve, classically built in timber by Tyrrell's of Arklow to celebrate their centenary in 1964. Both boats still sail from Dun Laoghaire. Meanwhile, on the left, we see evidence that while a dreamy be-spectacled young man may drive a very sensible Morris Minor, he needs to call in professional help to change a flat tyre. Photo: Howard Kilroy
REGULAR CLUB-STYLE RACING AT DUN LAOGHAIRE "IMPOSSIBLE" WITHOUT DBSC
Yet it is now difficult to imagine any of these senior organisations having regular club racing in The Bay and The Harbour without Dublin Bay SC Commodore Eddie Totterdell and Honorary Secretary Rosemary Roy being there with their experienced race teams to provide an overall structure.
Up-dating the Race Management Flotilla. DBSC Commodore Eddie Totterdell (left) with Colin Hunt of AIB and the newly-commissioned Committee Boat Corinthian.
Despite ultimately being a simplification of the basic overall requirements, it's a necessarily complex setup, relying on much voluntary work by their members to make DBSC capable of maintaining an intense season-long programme to meet the needs of all keelboats – both cruiser-racers and One Designs – while also catering for the needs of many and varied dinghies.
A big turnout for the DBSC 2024 annual prizegiving at the National Maritime Museum, Dun Laoghaire Photo: Michael Chester
Their prize-giving is thus an extraordinary distribution of silverware and other valuable materials and creations, and it has long since reached the stage where the greater space of open area in the Maritime Museum is the only harbour-side setting conveniently available to host it.
Shifting the silverware. This is only part of DBSC'S massive trophy hoard – much of it appropriately very historic – that was celebrated yesterday evening in the National Maritime Museum in Dun Laoghaire Photo: Michael Chester
FAST-MOVING ATTTUDE IN EARLY YEARS
We tend to think of the Victorians of the late 1800s who created DBSC as being a rather fuddy-duddy generation, slow to change and slower to take real action. But in fact it's the children of those Victorians from whom we take our mistaken notions of the Victorian mindset. The children of the Victorians were over-awed by their parents hyper-active and inventive way of life.
Thus it was the next generation whom we think of as having the Victorian atttude, as many of them tended to a conservative way of life in reaction to the rapidly-developing and ferociously energetic world of their childhood.
ENERGY AND INNOVATION
The trajectory of the Dublin Bay Sailing Club in its first twenty years was a classic expression of Victorian energy and innovation. For even within its first ten years, it was taking over considerable swathes of the developing Dublin Bay sailing scene, and inventing new ones.
It readily adopted the One Design ideal first codified in 1886 by Ben Middleton, founder in 1887 of the Water Wags to be the world's first OD class, initially using standard little lug-rigged sailing dinghies built in Scotland. Now the Water Wags are sailing more substantial sloop-rigged sailing boats designed by Dun Laoghaire's Maimie Doyle in 1900, but while they have maintained a certain determined independence ever since, it was soon all being done within the generous and tolerant (up to a point) DBSC umbrella.
Small and eccentric beginnings. The DBSC racing fleet in 1886. Photo: NYC
A DOZEN YEARS OF VERY RAPID PROGRESS
For in just a dozen years, Dublin Bay SC went fast – very fast. It moved from exclusively sailing a non-descript amusement-inducing dinghy class, boats of rather mixed hull designs that were powered by eccentric miniature yawl rigs, to emerging as the de facto harbour and bay sailing authority with international standing.
It began to flex its muscles with the development and regulation of the new 18ft Mermaid restricted dinghies from the early 1890s, together with the development and eventual discarding of the extreme and expensive Rater classes. The introduction of the keel/centreboard Colleen class soon followed, and then came the jackpot, the introduction of the Fife-designed Viceroy-supported Dublin Bay 25 in 1898, followed by the Mylne-designed Dublin Bay 21 in 1902.
A might leap. The Fife-designed Dublin Bay 25s started racing in 1898, and soon were so fashionable that the Viceroy, Lord Dudley, was gifted the Fodhla (no 1, left) by his wife. Photo: DBSC
Two of the 1902 Dublin Bay 21s racing in their restored form in Dublin Bay in 2024. Photo: Jonathan O'Rourke
QUALITY CLASSIC DESIGNS
"Dublin Bay" became so synonymous with quality One Designs that they were adopted elsewhere, with the Water Wags still sailed in India, while the Colleens were adopted in Argentina even though they fell out of favour in Dublin. Both the Fife-designed Dublin Bay 25 of 1898, and the Mylne-designed Dublin Bay 24, of 1934 but not sailing as a class in the Bay until 1947, could find sister-ships in Australia and Scotland.
Dr Rory O'Hanlon sailing his Dublin Bay 24 Harmony in a Royal Alfred YC race off the Wicklow coast in the late 1950s.
Southern sister. The sloop Wathara in Sydney Harbour was originally built in 1948 as a classic Dublin Bay 24, but was subsequently modernized, as seen here. However, the current owner is hoping to re-configure her as original in a major restoration.
These recognised classic designs were - and are - so good of their type, with their technically excellent construction plans and specifications, that several have been used in Boat-Building Schools in a number of countries, with the Water Wags meeting the needs of schools in France, Spain and the US, while the elegant 37.5ft long Dublin Bay 24 design, by Alfred Mylne in his prime, has proven to be of an ideal size and quality for teaching the at of building a classic keelboat.
ADVENT OF PLASTIC BOATS IN THE 1960s
However, the advent of plastic boats in varying levels of material sophistication has been impacting Dublin Bay sailing for more than sixty years, with an attempt – with mixed results - to introduce the "very glassfibery" van de Stadt-designed Excalibur 36 as a class in the mid-1960s, while after the arrival of Jack Sisk's glassfibre Sparkman & Stephens-designed Italian-built Alpha 36 Sarnia in the harbour in 1967, nothing was ever quite the same again.
Hal Sisk, seen here in his Water Wag Hope, has played the leading role in ensuring appreciation for Dun Laoghaire;s classic traditions
KEY ROLE OF SISK FAMILY
That said, the key role of the Sisk family in many pivotal Dun Laoghaire sailing developments has been remarkable, with the polymathic Hal Sisk making his mark at an early stage with the restoration of the 1884 Fife-designed plank-on-edge type cutter Vagrant, the revival of the Water Wags, the award-winning restoration of the 1894 Watson cutter Peggy Bawn, the replication of the Colleen as a GRP-built day sailer with auxiliary engine, and the ongoing reviving of the Dublin Bay 21 Class - with Fionan de Barra - as a re-build exercise in wood and epoxy by Steve Morris of Kilrush Boatyard on the Shannon Estuary.
The Johnston brothers aboard their family's Dublin Bay 24 Harmony in 1997, with guest crew including Dr Barbara O'Hanlon, Cass Smulllen, and Tim Pearson
Chris Johnston's First 31.7 Prospect was last night awarded the DBSC Newsome Cup for top-performing One Design. Photo: Afloat.ie
All this goes to show the changing world sailing and boat-building scene that Dublin Bay Sailing Club has had to go through, and interact with, in order to be not merely still relevant, but rather to be up to speed and pro-active in making the changes that offer its many service-users the most viable options to make the best of their astonishing area of racing water within city limits.
REGATTA NUMBERS IN NORMAL RACING
It has now reached the stage that each summer evening race on weekdays, or Saturday afternoon regular programmes, are mustering fleets in numbers that many regattas elsewhere would be more than glad to have. And it's all brought to a close for 2024 with the annual Autumn-Into-Winter Turkey Shoot series, inspired by former DBSC Commodore Fintan Cairns. It culminates in a Sunday race as near to Christmas Day as is decent, and is currently attracting a remarkable fleet of 72 boats.
Something rather different. DBSC Dinghy Champion Noel Butler racing his RS Aero in the Euros. Photo: Antoine Dujoncquoy
And different again. Noel Butler aboard Lindsay Casey's cup-inning J/97 Windjammer. Photo: Noel Butler
That this is going on tomorrow after last night's Prize Giving put the summer sailing to bed says much. But equally, the fact that DBSC management are prepared highlight their four main prizes out of the mountain of club silverware, crystal glass and other expensive materials shows that ultimately the central factor in DBSC's continuing success and strength is good old-fashioned realism.
Most senior class tests newest technology for DBSC – Water Wags racing with and Autonomous Gipsy Race Mark in Dun Laoghaire harbour. Photo: Brendan Briscoe
DBSC REALISM
You find it in the answers to two questions from other sailing race managers:
AUTONOMOUS RACE MARKS ? - We've been testing them.
STATE-OF-THE-ART-COMMITTEE BOATS? - We up-dated our Race Committee platforms with the commissioning of another new purpose-built boat with the support of our friends at AIB during the season of 2024.
Going for it. The successful J/97 Windjammer (Lindsay Casey). Photo: Afloat.ie
TOP FOUR PRIZES
So now, those top four prizes. We've deliberately left it to last, in defiance of all newshound principles, because it's much too easy to take for granted all those fleets of racing boats moving to some underlying pattern in Dublin Bay. For there's a fascinating and developing story behind it all, a story of great volunteerism and community spirit that simply gets on with it while the winners get the glory. And here they are:
Dr Alf Delaney Cup.
The most successful Dinghy of the season. Noel Butler, Orion, PY Class.
Noel Butler, Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Year" for 2004 when he and Stephen Campion won the Laser 2 Worlds at a time when the Laser 2 was one of the hottest two-person classes globally, is now an RS Aero solo-sailing ace with international successes logged. He's of a high-achieving family, as his late father Dick was a prominent academic and university founder and administrator who also found the time to be a leading astronomer and amateur sailor. He called his boat Orion in honour of his favourite constellation, and son Noel had done the same with his Aero, while being extra-busy is in the genes – he's the mid-week Dublin Bay helm on Lindsay Casey's high scoring J/97 Windjammer.
"Four Seasons in a Day". The DBSC Flying Fifteen class racing in weather very typical of 2024. Photo: Afloat.ie
Waterhouse Shield.
The most successful yacht in a handicapped series. Lindsay Casey, Windjammer, Cruisers 2
The J/97 is many people's favourite of the J/Boat range, as you get more than enough boat without the daunting crew number requirements of the larger craft. Thus helming selection is of added significance, and for 2024 Lndsay Casey had it cracked with Noel Butler doing the driving mid-week, while Shane Kelly was on at weekends.
George Arthur Newsome Cup.
The most successful yacht in One Design racing. Chris Johnston, Prospect, Beneteau 31.7.
The Johnston family are Dublin Bay One Designs born and bred. Father Paul was a leading figure in the Dublin Bay 21s with Geraldine both under their hard-driving jackyard topsail-setting gaff rig, and in the "second coming" with Bermuda rig from 1963-1984. Sons Chris and Paul continued with the DB24 Harmony, and now Chris is setting the pace in the Beneteau 31.7 D class with Prospect.
Brendan Ebril Memorial Cup.
Commodore's award for the yacht that most displays the spirit of sailing in Dublin Bay. Rodney & Sally Martin, Gemini, Cruisers 5.
The Martin family are another of those long-sailing Dublin Bay Clans which would have sailed with Noah on the Ark except that, then as now, they have always had their own yacht. Their input into DBSC has reverberated down the ages with the previous generation of brothers leading figures in the DB 24 class, then they led the way into the new with the Frers-designed First 42 Lovely Lady and other larger Beneteau craft that culminated in a First 44.7 – also Lovely Lady – notching success inshore and offshore.
You'd think they had long since ticked all the boxes. But now current generation Rodney & Sally Martin, having more than done their duty by the big 'uns, have taken up a different direction with white-sailing the Sun Odyssey 32 Gemini in DBSC Class 5, and they've shown they can master the short-handed stuff with such style that they have won what is arguably DBSC's most significant cup.
This is now. Rod & Sally Martin in their beautifully-presented and easily-handled Sun Odyssey 32L Gemini – note precise and even suspending of the fenders as they prepare to berth. They have won DBSC's Brendan Ebril Memorial Cup for best displaying the spirit of Dublin bay sailing.
That was then. "What she can't carry, she'll drag". The previous generation of Martin brothers emerging from Dun Laoghaire Harbour into a sudden sharp gust of westerly wind as they race their Dublin Bay 24 Adastra.
DBSC 2024 Prizegiving Photo Gallery by Michael Chester
The full list of DBSC prizewinners is below
