It’s currently Regatta Time in a big way in Ireland at the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire and the Bangor clubs on Belfast Lough, with high stakes in terms of appropriate weather and the provision of good sailing. As for the word “regatta”, it supposedly comes from competitive gondoliers in Venice, and was an evolution from rigattare, “to compete, haggle, sell at retail”.

That, when you think of it, does rather describe the modern yacht and sailing club regatta, in that competition – while supposedly only part of it – is paramount, and you have to haggle to get the best crew together as the type of weather likely to prevail becomes clearer nearer to the time.

Peggy Bawn makes her debut in the ownership of A J A Lepper at the Royal Ulster YC Regatta at Bangor on Befast Lough in 1894. Originally, in order to keep her rating down to the required 2.5 rule requirements, she sailed without a topsail, but that was changed by a subsequent owner who wanted speed regardless. Photo: Courtesy RUYC

BARGAINING THE ENTRANCE FEE

Then too, there’s the haggling in getting entered under the early bargain entry fee, long after the buy-by date has passed. Happily, things aren’t quite as bad as they were in the old days, when a Regatta Secretary of yore once confessed that when he died, if they opened up his heart they’d find: “Sure, of course you knew we were coming” inscribed thereon.

As for the selling at retail, it can be revealed that in times past when the regatta was in Dun Laoghaire at the National or the nearby Royal St George, the retail end was so active that the secret to unflustered conviviality was to secure a robust tray and half a dozen big empty glasses, and then send your nimblest crewman over to the almost-totally-unpopulated neighbouring club for the instant provision of pints.

BATTLING CROWDS AND AVOIDING QUEUES

This was preferable to battling in the crowds at the hosting club’s bar facilities, an experience which was always a reminder that the Irish just don’t do queues, and half the time we can’t even spell the word properly. Yet it worked out to be scrupulously fair overall, as you simply reversed the procedure the following weekend when the alternative club was hosting its annual beanfeast afloat.

The great unspoken is the wind and the weather, seldom just right on either or both counts, and this week it has been slowly deteriorating from ultra-summer to dodgy just as we need the graph to trend the other way.


The first regatta at the new harbour of Kingstown on Dublin Bay in 1828. It was inspired by the Viceroy, Waterloo veteran the Marquess of Anglesey, whose famous cutter Pearl is on left of picture beyond the crowded boat sailing on the port tack. Anglesey subsequently became the Founding Commodore of the Royal Irish YC in 1831.

Yet even as the Round Ireland Race draws to a close in Wicklow, the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire is today (Saturday) staging its traditional regatta as the culmination of a week of events to mark its 195th year, and the installation of its first female Commodore, Winifred Kelliher.

FIRST WOMAN COMMODORE WAS IN COBH

We’re now told by Our Man in Munster that the first woman Commodore in Ireland was not Avril Harris at the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club in 1972 as previously stated, but Joan Denvir at Cove Sailing Club in Cork Harbour in the 1950s. That’s as may be, but the RIYC comes with such a weight of history on its side that the very fact of them having a woman Commodore at all rather sidelines every other claimant to distinction.

But when we cast our eyes beyond Dublin Bay, the history of sailing regattas in Ireland is so rich and varied that it should really only be taken aboard in measured doses.

RICH REGATTA HISTORY

For instance, it’s said that the name of Daniel O’Connell of Derrynane as a noted yachtsman first came up in sailing lights not in 1846 when he played a central role in the revival of the Royal Irish YC, but in 1828 when he crewed for his uncle, Maurice “Hunting Cap” O’Connell of Cahirsiveen, in a regatta at Kilrush on the Shannon Estuary from which the Royal Western Yacht Club of Ireland emerged.

Kilrush as it was in the days when Daniel O’Connell and his uncle played a leading role in the foundation of the Royal Western YC of Ireland on the Shannon Estuary in 1828

Kilrush today, its marina one of the most strategically useful on Europe’s Atlantic coast.

But way before that, the world-leading Water Club of the Harbour of Cork, founded 1720, was staging regattas without being aware that this was what they were going to be called. And by the 1770s, the yacht-owning landowners (land-grabbers?) around the great Shannon lake of Lough Ree were staging regattas every Monday in summertime.

INCAPABILITY REQUIRED BY SUNSET

It’s assumed that Mondays were chosen just to stick it up to the rest of the population that they were able to go sailing if they so fancied on everybody else’s work-plus day. And further to differentiate from the harshness of everyday life, the only rigidly imposed rule was that each owner-skipper absolutely had to bring his own personal manservant with him, as he would be showing a deplorable lack of enthusiasm and the proper spirit if he wasn’t totally incapably inebriated by the time the sun set.

The Belfast Regatta of 1829, staged by the Northern Yacht Club which was originally founded in Belfast in 1824.

Regattas were being staged in Belfast Lough from at least 1820 onwards, and the Northern Yacht Club was formed in 1824 in Belfast, but it attracted so many Scottish members that a Scottish branch was soon formed, and forged ahead with such gusto that by 1831 it was the Royal Northern Yacht Club based at Rothesay, and by 1838 it absorbed all that was left of the founding Belfast section.

The Scottish branch of the Northern Yacht Club soon outgrew its Belfast parentage, and this is the Royal Northern YC regatta of 1830 at Rothesay in the Firth of Clyde. The Belfast Section was completely absorbed into the RNYC in 1838.

Meanwhile we did of course have the historic first regatta at what had become Kingstown New Harbour on Dublin Bay in 1828 under the benign guidance of the Viceroy, the one-legged Marquess of Anglesey, veteran of Waterloo. He brought over his famous cutter Pearl from the Menai Straits as inspiration, but sensibly didn’t race her as she’d have sailed rings round everything else, thus the entire sunlit event was one of great goodwill and cordiality.

Yet the following year in 1829, the need for good weather was forcefully demonstrated, as the second Kingstown Regatta was on a very rainy day, the bon ton and spectators were soaked through and soon returned to town in extremely bad humour, and the professional yacht crews – having learned in 1828 that there was serious money to be won – turned what was supposed to be a sporting yacht race into an extremely aggressive mini naval battle.

By the 1870s, a rainy day at the Kingstown Regatta could be better enjoyed by spectators as they had much improved umbrellas, and since 1834 the railway connection made getting back to Dublin much more convenient. Photo: Hugh Walsh Collection

Yet despite that, with Anglesey’s support the Royal Irish Yacht Club came into being in 1831 and it was a northside club, as its home for a while was the Gresham Hotel, presumably for the convenience of the Commodore up above in the Phoenix Park.

Whatever, the show was on the road, and 195 years later the RIYC Classics Regatta last weekend began celebrations afloat and ashore, with the Water Wags staging a special large turnout on Wednesday, but alas Thursday’s DBSC Weekly Keelboats Racing – usually a regatta in itself – didn’t happen with lack of wind.

The 1890s were the peak era of sailing at Kingstown as a spectator sport, as there were few significant rival attractions for family viewing

So much depends on a certain level or reasonable wind and weather today. We can only hope that, with all of Donegal smothered under a vast thunderstorm on Thursday night, the bad weather boil infecting Ireland has been lanced, and today’s RIYC 195th Anniversary Regatta will enjoy weather approaching the sublime conditions enjoyed by the classics last weekend.