An evening of stellar participation in Dun Laoghaire this week saw the Royal Irish Yacht Club further brightened by the strong Spring sunshine as Commodore Tim Carpenter and his impressive management team accepted the MG Motor "Sailing Club of the Year 2025" award. This time round, the presentation - by Andrew Johnson, MD of MG Motor Ireland - honours a senior club whose founding date of 1831 is belied by the youthful enthusiasm and success afloat demonstrated by its members – both as participants and organisers – in major local, regional, national and international events.
While the exceptional early-April sunshine gave a hint of the RIYC in season, this is how the vintage clubhouse comes to life at regatta time. Photo: Afloat.ie
It was an evening of dreams fulfilled and dreams dreamed. The many and varied sailors present were surprised by the sudden emergence of the boy racer side of their personality. This was evoked by the presence of the new MG Motor all-electric Cyberster sports roadster –the Silver Bullet - looking very much at home under the classically collonaded portal of Dublin Bay's senior yacht club. On a sunny evening, the Cyberster looked stylishly all of a piece, very much everyone's ideal of a sports roadster.
Despite being all-electric and very eco-friendly, the MG Cyberster soon inspired the nickname of The Silver Bullet outside the club's sunlit façade. Photo: Miguel Walker
"LIVE LONG AND LIVE WELL"
As for the varied and sometimes very colourful story of the winning club, the adjudicators put it neatly by commenting that "Live Long and Live Well" is the best response to the difficulties and challenges which life can pose for people and clubs alike. The RIYC's stately John Skipton Mulvany-designed clubhouse of 1850-vintage may seem to speak of a world apart. But the reality is that – within and on its waterfront - it is a haven of warm hospitality, safely enclosed within the marina to enable the club to function very successfully in many areas of sailing and local community life.
The Royal Irish YC's location enables it to function successfully as a stylish conduit between sea and shore
We listed the RIYC's many successes and worthy achievements, both on sea and in the community, with the Club of the Year award announcement on Afloat.ie on Saturday 4th January. Since then, the publication of the latest enlarged edition of "White Sails Crowding", the ongoing history of the RIYC being maintained by the Boylan family, has reminded everyone of so many fresh achievements that it is difficult to keep track of them all.
Keeping up-to-date on the RIYC history at the launch in March of the new much-enlarged club history White Sailing Crowding were (left to right) Vice Commodore Winifred Kelliher, authors Peter Boylan and Jane Mahony, and Commodore Tim Carpenter. Photo: Miguel Walker.
ON PACE RIGHT THROUGH SEASON
"Ongoing" is the key word. Designating some high-achieving sailing organisation – large or small - as "Club of the Year" is a matter of grabbing a snapshot of something in constant motion. And it's sometimes very rapid and complex motion at that, as for instance, in the RIYC's staging of the IRC Euros in mid-September, when Sailing Manager Mark McGibney and his team had to find fresh energy to keep everything in place and on pace at season's end.
Busy time on the waterfront –the RIYC hosts a major Optimist Dinghy championship. Photo: RIYC
Busy RIYC sailing evening. The 1887-founded Water Wags come into the slip after their weekly racing, while the IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss is made welcome at the clubside floating berth. Photo: W M Nixon
When you remember that in addition to the day-to-day running of the club's busy forecourt, Mark finds the time to be the cox'n of the RNLI's Dun Laoghaire Lifeboat, then you quickly realise that a very high performance level is the norm in the club's administration, and people like Vice Commodore Winifred Kelliher and full-time secretary Sarah Breen function together in such a way that a visitor to the club will sometimes find difficulty in working out who is staff and who is a time-dedicating member.
People who keep the wheels turning. At the "Club of the Year" reception were (left to right) RIYC Trustee and former Irish Cruising Club Commodore David Beattie, Aoife Beattie, and Michael Tyrrell (RIYC), who was appointed as am International Race Officer in 2024, and was "Sailor of the Month" last November. Photo: Miguel Walker.
Among the many successes for RIYC sailors in 2024 were several offshore achievements, such as class wins in the Round Ireland Race and Cork Week. But already that is history, as the early start to the 2025 Irish Sea Offshore Racing Association season last weekend in a cracking breeze saw ISORA Race 1 2025 being won by Paul O'Higgins JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI RIYC. So the show is well and truly on the road, with two RIYC boats nominated for the Admirals Cup and Fastnet Race Centenary from Cowes in July, and a team entered for the New York YC Invitational at Newport Rhode Island in September, while the club will of course being played a central role in the four day Volvo Dun Laoghaire regatta in July. Read More
Peter Smyth's Ker 46 Searcher (RIYC) was top of the Irish and second overall in the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O'Brien
Paul O'Higgins' JPK 10.80 Rockabill VI (RIYC) has given the club's 2025 season a flying start by winning last weeken's first ISORA race of 2025. Photo: Afloat.ie/David O'Brien
But equally, the presentation of the MG Motor award allows for a few hours of reflection, stock-taking and historic appreciation. The RIYC's first Commodore in 1931 was the Marquess of Anglesey, who was best known in sailing circles as the longtime owner of the super-successful cutter Pearl, but was know for much else besides.
HEAT OF BATTLE
In the wider world, Anglesey is renowned as being the Duke of Wellington's second in command at the Battle of Waterloo, when the pair of them - while observing on horseback - were caught out by a rake of gunfire. In the heat and smoke of it, Anglesey suddenly shouted "By God, sir, I've lost my leg", to which the Iron Duke replied "By God sir, so you have".
Anglesey survived, and in peacetime continued sailing. Instead of seeing the loss of his right leg as a disaster, he saw it as an opportunity to be in the forefront of artificial leg research and development with inventor James Potts. They reckoned Long John Silver type wooden legs were primitive in the extreme, but as chat at the Club of the Year award revealed, if you visit the first Commodore's stately home of Plas Newydd on Anglesey while cruising North Wales, you'll discover an entire room given over to his collection of prosthetic legs of increasing effectiveness.
The Marquess of Anglesey, founding Commodore RIYC, was a keen amateur sailor throughout his long life. In 1848 he presented a silver cup to the Royal Yacht Squadron to encourage more racing at a low point in the Squadron's activities. It wasn't used until 1851 that it was finally used, when it became the trophy for a race round the Isle of Wight added on to the end of Cowes Week to provide competition for a visiting boat. As a result, we now know it better as the America's Cup.
Never one to miss an opportunity, he always ensured that his wooden right leg was a elegant limb, with a beautifully turned calf. You cannot but help thinking of this when in the Royal Irish YC, as it follows the philosophy of turning potential problems into opportunities.
CHERISHED CLUBHOUSE
For many groups of sportsmen, being saddled with a high-maintenance 175-year-old listed building as their clubhouse would be seen as an over-powering burden. But today's RIYC members, personified by Commodore Carpenter and his team, see it as something wonderful to be cherished, beautifully maintained, and actively used for a host of activities, with successful sailing in a pre-eminent role.
A four decade partnership with the "Sailing Club of the Year" contest being marked at the RIYC Dun Laoghaire with (left to right) W M Nixon (Convenor of Ajudicators), Commodore Tim Carpenter (RIYC), Andrew Johnson, Gerard Rice and Brian Keane of MG Motor Ireland, and Winifred Kelliher, Vice Commodore RIYC. Photo: Miguel Walker
That's what it takes these days to be MG Motor Sailing Club of the Year. The association with the brand's parent group in Ireland, Frank Keane Holdings, will be celebrating its 40th Anniversary next year. And in those four and more decades, Ireland's many and varied yacht and sailing clubs have steadily progressed in developing their central and vital role in our sport.
