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Displaying items by tag: Liverpool Boat Show

The River Mersey's biggest sailing event in living memory will take place when two open regattas are staged during the Liverpool Boat Show.

About 150 boats will compete in a series of spectacular races on each of the two weekends of the show, which takes place from April 29 to May 8 next year.

Up to three races will be held each day on the weekends of April 30 and May 7, with classes for modern racing yachts, ultra-fast multi-hulls, local classes and traditional nobbys.

The regattas – comprising the Royal Dee Yacht Club Spring Regatta and the Liverpool Yacht Club Kindred Clubs Regatta – will be one of the main highlights of the Liverpool Boat Show, which takes place in the splendid surroundings of the Albert Dock.

Competitors from across the UK and Ireland are expected to take part in the regattas, which will see boats racing against each other on courses in front of the Albert Dock.

Today organisers urged enthusiasts and clubs to submit their entries for the races to secure a place in one of the most spectacular sailing events of the year.

Alastair Soane, chair of the race committee, said: "This will be the biggest sailing event for probably 70 or 80 years on the River Mersey and interest is already very high."

Alastair Soane, a past Commodore and President of Liverpool Yacht Club who sits on the steering committee of the boat show, added: "We already have expressions of interest from clubs and individuals in Scotland, Wales and Ireland and we are keen to get representation from the sailing fraternity right across the UK, including the South coast.

"The combination of the festival atmosphere of the show and the spectacle of the racing will make these truly unique events and we'd urge potential participants to register as soon as possible."

A number of North West clubs are supporting the regattas, including Liverpool Yacht Club, the Royal Mersey Yacht Club, the Royal Dee Yacht Club, West Kirby Sailing Club, Wallasey Yacht Club, Dee Sailing Club, Blundell Sands Sailing Club, Liverpool Sailing Club, Hoylake Sailing Club, West Lancs Sailing Club and the Nobby Association.

Mr Soane said: "The entire North West sailing community is throwing its weight behind the Liverpool Boat Show and we are determined to make it a show like no other and to showcase to a whole new generation the pleasure and benefits to be had from sailing."

Published in Maritime Festivals

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.