Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

The All In A Row Liffey Challenge was held in early December on the capital’s River Liffey with the challenge for the rowers to smash a 1,000km target in eight hours. Fifty skiffs, kayaks, canoes, dragon boats and currachs were…

Cruising Club of America Blue Water Medallist Paddy Barry and Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association President Adrian Spence have taken on the Arctic cruising challenge in a variety of craft over the years. But in 2022, they combined forces to…

When the multi-talented John B Kearney (1879-1967) retired from a distinguished career in Dublin Port in 1944, he re-focused most of his attention on his parallel interest as a yacht designer and builder. It was an enduring passion that went…

Nobody knows how maritime researcher and historian Cormac Lowth does it all. But while most of us are still absorbing his recently-launched encyclopaedic book about the once hugely active Ringsend sailing trawler fleet, he has been re-focusing on another of…

Cormac Lowth of Dublin is a one-man Irish maritime history institute, the first and last port of call for anyone seeking the facts about some aspect of our seagoing history, whether it's obscure or supposedly well-known. Quite how he carries…

It is said that you have to be prepared to wait until the 15th July in the average season before you can contemplate a successful venture into the most heavily-iced parts of East Greenland. Whether or not global warming has…

The 36ft yawl Ainmara, designed and built in 1912 by the talented self-taught naval architect John B Kearney in Murphy’s Boatyard beside his family’s home in Ringsend, played a key role in Irish sailing north and south until 2018. She…

The Dublin Bay Old Gaffers (DBOGA) two-day regatta at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club on the River Liffey was also a casualty of the weekend's nor'easter. Disappointingly, the planned Parade of Sail on the capital's river had to be cancelled…

Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe, T.D. was at the Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club Marina, Ringsend on the River Liffey today, to present scholarship certificates to the first cohort of students completing the inaugural Irish Nautical Trust Marine Skills &…

The saga of the building and sailing of the traditional Galway Hooker Naomh Cronan by Clondalkin Community in west Dublin goes back nearly thirty years. And though the story has regularly featured in Afloat.ie,the various lockdowns had made it difficult…

The possibility that stellar jockey Rachael Blackmore, the winner of the Grand National in 2021 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup this year, might just be descended from a noted Dublin nautical family has emerged from traditional boat enthusiast and maritime…

One of the most entertaining events of the constrained pre-Christmas season was the All In A Row charity event for all-comers - provided they were oar-driven – in Dublin’s River Liffey on Saturday, December 11th 2021. It mustered an exceptionally…

In the latest Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Zoom talk Mark Sweetman will recount his search for a nesting dinghy design to suit his needs and how he ended up building one himself. For a long time, Mark wanted a hard tender…