Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Sailing and boating sports were more frustrated than many other activities during the highly-restricted peaks of the pandemic. For although it was universally agreed that there was nowhere more healthy and infection-free than aboard a boat out on the water…

Who gets your vote for Afloat Irish Sailor of the Year 2021? Afloat Sailors of the Month in 2021 kept our sport going through adversity is the view of Winkie Nixon in his review of 24 individual sailors, pairings and crews (below)…

With his fifth win of the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race’s prized Tattersall Cup for overall victory – with the most recent wins being three in a row with Matt Allen’s TP52 Ichi Ban – ex-Pat Howth sailor Gordon Maguire has confirmed…

Conor Haughey of Malahide admits to an addiction. It’s to saltwater and long-distance voyaging. But though he has made several transoceanic passages, it wasn’t until he bought the comfortable yet swift Moody 54DS Hibernian that he reckoned he could take…

The National Yacht Club’s flotilla of Elliott 6M match-racing boats came into their own early in December, when the club staged its inaugural Invitational Match Racing Series, successfully drawing in competition from near and far to being together a highly…

As 2021 draws to a close, the Irish sailing community has learned yet again that there’s nothing like a major international success by one of our own to brighten the dark days of November. And when that success comes to…

Team Racing makes for great sailing sport, and is unrivalled in its effectiveness in honing close-quarters boat-handling skills. But it’s an especially unforgiving type of contest, for although everyone is mutually reliant for success, at the very end it often…

Young Rian Collins of Royal Cork YC has been cutting a swathe through Irish Topper racing in 2021, maintaining the special reputation of an extended family long associated with Crosshaven sailing and success. He concluded his campaigning on a high…

When 144 sailors descend on a club like the hospitable but relatively small (numerically-speaking) Carlingford Sailing Club for a festival of team racing, the pressure is on, both afloat and ashore. That pressure is in no way lessened by the…

Even in a pandemic-shortened season like 2021, by the time October is reached, some Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" award winners from earlier months are achieving further success. At year's end, these new successes are gathered in with their earlier…

Turning 15 can be a difficult development stage for a young sailor. But Howth's Rocco Wright has been managing it with aplomb as he turned in some impressive race-winning performances at the mega-fleet Optimist Worlds on Lake Garda, shaped up…

The exceptionally-demanding final 642-mile stage of La Solitaire du Figaro 2021 took the 34-strong fleet from Morlaix in Brittany northwest round the Fastnet Rock, and then southeast to the finish at Saint-Nazaire on France's Biscay Coast. After three frustrating stages,…

A veteran of foil sailing at just 19, Charlie Cullen of the Royal St George YC has been cutting an increasingly impressive furrow through Waszp racing in 2021 as the national and international programme resumes. In mid-September, he reached new…

The efficiently-organised Flying Fifteens are Ireland's largest One-Design keelboat class, and despite the pandemic, they have managed to stage regulation-compliant National Championships in 2020 and 2021, at Dunmore East and on Strangford Lough, respectively. With former world champions and Olympic…

When a sailing school boat of a certain maturity starts to show consistently well in open competition in the decidedly challenging Rolex Fastnet Race, people start to take notice. And as the new-style and longer Fastnet of 2021 progressed, that…

The restoration of all seven original Dublin Bay 21ft One-Designs (the oldest of them date from 1903) is still work in progress. But a major milestone in the process - the Cape Horn of a unique voyage – was safely…