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Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

A Sigma 33 One Design keelboat racing on Dublin Bay Photo: AfloatA Sigma 33 One Design keelboat racing on Dublin Bay Photo: Afloat

Sailing in Ireland. Sailors, Yachting, Clubs, Regattas
Maritimo 52 before retiring overnight from the Sydney Hobart Race
As Andoo Comanche and LawConnect continue their game of cat and mouse at the front end of the Rolex Sydney Hobart fleet, little more than four nautical miles separating the pair, two further retirements were reported overnight. The Michael Spies…
The Cookson 12 Calibre 12 with Stephanie Lyons of Kinsale YC on the bow is currently class leader in the Sydney-Hobart race 2023
We cast the net wide in assessing just who might be thought of as Irish in the hundred crews still contesting the 2023 Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race as it emerges from its first night at sea. So even though navigator/tactician Adrienne…
Sean Langman's Will Byrne-crewed Reichel Pugh-designed Moneypenny
Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt of Kinsale, racing the Sun Fast 3300 Cinnamon Girl-Eden Capital, were leading the 628-mile Rolex Sydney Hobart Race's two-handed division of 15 starters after nine hours of racing, and are the top-placed small boat overall,…
Scallywag before retiring from the 2023 Sydney Hobart Race
Seng Huang Lee’s 100ft SHK Scallywag from Hong Kong, has become the first casualty of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race, breaking her bow sprit early this evening Sydney time. SHK Scallywag, skippered by David Witt, had recently undergone modifications…
In the front line, the maxis, TP52s and other medium boats had a clean start. The four maxis were separated into two pods. HSK Scallywag and Wild Thing 100 set off close to the pin on the western side of the harbour, while LawConnect and Andoo Comanche favoured the east.
LawConnect made the best of its bid to break a hoodoo of three runner-up finishes in the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race by leading the fleet towards the Heads after this afternoon’s start. The Christian Beck-owned maxi led off the…
Peter Dean (front left) with the Winning Appliances crew is ready for the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race
Peter Dean will never forget the last moment he shared with his father John; it was dockside, just before John sailed off on Winston Churchill to start the 1998 Sydney Hobart Race. Tragically, John was to never return, being one…
Endurance became stuck in ice and sank in the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica in 1915
An assessment of Ernest Shackleton's lost ship, the wreck of the Endurance in the Antarctic, recommends it is best preserved if left where it is. The shipwreck is 3,000 metres below sea level and in a "very stable" condition, the…
Annalise Murphy with her Rio 2016 silver medal
Annalise Murphy and Eve McMahon are among the nominees in this year’s Her Sport Awards. After yet another historic and momentous year for Irish sportswomen, the Her Sport Awards aim to celebrate and recognise the incredible achievements of Irish athletes…
NYC juniors regatta racing in Dun Laoghaire Harbour in July 2023
Every Sunday morning until 24 March, the National Yacht Club is running a coached racing series for dinghy sailors. The series comprises short sprint-style races set up as a pursuit, with the slower boats starting first and the faster boats…
Lola Kohl and James Dwyer were one of seven Fireball dinghies that got a good thrash around Monkstown Bay in Cork Harbour on day three of the December Fireball Frostbite League
Day three of the December Fireball Frostbite League was held on Saturday, the 23rd, on Monkstown Bay in Cork Harbour in glorious winter sailing conditions. A beautiful sunrise set the tone for the morning's racing. The bay was awash with golden light…
Sean Langman's Will Byrne-crewed Reichel Pugh-designed Moneypenny may be 69ft long, but she seems to sit as light as a feather on the sea
Although the only totally Irish entry in Tuesday's Rolex Sydney Hobart Race 2023 is the Kinsale YC duo of Cian McCarthy and Sam Hunt with the chartered Sun Fast 3300 Cinnamon Girl-Eden Capital, further Irish representation has emerged at the…
Alfie Mayr's new H-Boat Final Fling (right)  and  Andy Speedy's MG Spring Corinthian racing at the Antrim Boat Club Winter Series on Lough Neagh
Antrim Boat Club Winter Series returned on 5th November with six races scheduled for the first half when nine competitors signed up for the series and sailed out of the club in the northwest corner of Lough Neagh in Northern…
Dun Laoghaire Waszp sailors Rian Geraghty McDonnell and Georgia Goodbody finished sixth and seventh respectively in the bronze fleet at the Foil International Academy Trophy in Italy
Irish Waszp sailors competed at an intense week at the Foil International Academy Trophy in Italy. The event gathered over 40 athletes from 10 nations in the waters of Cagliari, at Su Siccu. In the Waszp discipline, Swedish Hanno Seifert…
BOM Senior Forecaster Gabrielle Woodhouse addresses the fleet
With the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race start two days away, uncertainty remains for crews over the expected conditions – except that a long, wet and cold journey is in store. The NSW Bureau of Meteorology [BOM] updated forecast on…
Cormac McHenry
Afloat.ie regrets to record the death of Cormac McHenry, for many years a leading figure in the Irish Cruising Club. He also served as a Trustee and was a Life Member of the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. An…
Thomas Chaix afloat in Dun Laoghaire Harbour in his RS Aero dinghy
The RS Aero 1066 is back afloat... She is one of the first generation, and she has plenty of fun to give to its third owner. After four sessions afloat (and finally a bit of hiking at the weekend frostbite…

How to sail, sailing clubs and sailing boats plus news on the wide range of sailing events on Irish waters forms the backbone of Afloat's sailing coverage.

We aim to encompass the widest range of activities undertaken on Irish lakes, rivers and coastal waters. This page describes those sailing activites in more detail and provides links and breakdowns of what you can expect from our sailing pages. We aim to bring jargon free reports separated in to popular categories to promote the sport of sailing in Ireland.

The packed 2013 sailing season sees the usual regular summer leagues and there are regular weekly race reports from Dublin Bay Sailing Club, Howth and Cork Harbour on Afloat.ie. This season and last also featured an array of top class events coming to these shores. Each year there is ICRA's Cruiser Nationals starts and every other year the Round Ireland Yacht Race starts and ends in Wicklow and all this action before July. Crosshaven's Cork Week kicks off on in early July every other year. in 2012 Ireland hosted some big international events too,  the ISAF Youth Worlds in Dun Laoghaire and in August the Tall Ships Race sailed into Dublin on its final leg. In that year the Dragon Gold Cup set sail in Kinsale in too.

2013 is also packed with Kinsale hosting the IFDS diabled world sailing championships in Kinsale and the same port is also hosting the Sovereign's Cup. The action moves to the east coast in July with the staging of the country's biggest regatta, the Volvo Dun Laoghaire regatta from July 11.

Our coverage though is not restricted to the Republic of Ireland but encompasses Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the Irish Sea area too. In this section you'll find information on the Irish Sailing Association and Irish sailors. There's sailing reports on regattas, racing, training, cruising, dinghies and keelboat classes, windsurfers, disabled sailing, sailing cruisers, Olympic sailing and Tall Ships sections plus youth sailing, match racing and team racing coverage too.

Sailing Club News

There is a network of over 70 sailing clubs in Ireland and we invite all clubs to submit details of their activities for inclusion in our daily website updates. There are dedicated sections given over to the big Irish clubs such as  the waterfront clubs in Dun Laoghaire; Dublin Bay Sailing Club, the Royal Saint George Yacht Club,  the Royal Irish Yacht Club and the National Yacht Club. In Munster we regularly feature the work of Kinsale Yacht Club and Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven.  Abroad Irish sailors compete in Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) racing in the UK and this club is covered too. Click here for Afloat's full list of sailing club information. We are keen to increase our coverage on the network of clubs from around the coast so if you would like to send us news and views of a local interest please let us have it by sending an email to [email protected]

Sailing Boats and Classes

Over 20 active dinghy and one design classes race in Irish waters and fleet sizes range from just a dozen or so right up to over 100 boats in the case of some of the biggest classes such as the Laser or Optimist dinghies for national and regional championships. Afloat has dedicated pages for each class: Dragons, Etchells, Fireball, Flying Fifteen, GP14, J24's, J80's, Laser, Sigma 33, RS Sailing, Star, Squibs, TopperMirror, Mermaids, National 18, Optimist, Puppeteers, SB3's, and Wayfarers. For more resources on Irish classes go to our dedicated sailing classes page.

The big boat scene represents up to 60% of the sail boat racing in these waters and Afloat carries updates from the Irish Cruiser Racer Association (ICRA), the body responsible for administering cruiser racing in Ireland and the popular annual ICRA National Championships. In 2010 an Irish team won the RORC Commodore's Cup putting Irish cruiser racing at an all time high. Popular cruiser fleets in Ireland are raced right around the coast but naturally the biggest fleets are in the biggest sailing centres in Cork Harbour and Dublin Bay. Cruisers race from a modest 20 feet or so right up to 50'. Racing is typically divided in to Cruisers Zero, Cruisers One, Cruisers Two, Cruisers Three and Cruisers Four. A current trend over the past few seasons has been the introduction of a White Sail division that is attracting big fleets.

Traditionally sailing in northern Europe and Ireland used to occur only in some months but now thanks to the advent of a network of marinas around the coast (and some would say milder winters) there are a number of popular winter leagues running right over the Christmas and winter periods.

Sailing Events

Punching well above its weight Irish sailing has staged some of the world's top events including the Volvo Ocean Race Galway Stopover, Tall Ships visits as well as dozens of class world and European Championships including the Laser Worlds, the Fireball Worlds in both Dun Laoghaire and Sligo.

Some of these events are no longer pure sailing regattas and have become major public maritime festivals some are the biggest of all public staged events. In the past few seasons Ireland has hosted events such as La Solitaire du Figaro and the ISAF Dublin Bay 2012 Youth Worlds.

There is a lively domestic racing scene for both inshore and offshore sailing. A national sailing calendar of summer fixtures is published annually and it includes old favorites such as Sovereign's Cup, Calves Week, Dun Laoghaire to Dingle, All Ireland Sailing Championships as well as new events with international appeal such as the Round Britain and Ireland Race and the Clipper Round the World Race, both of which have visited Ireland.

The bulk of the work on running events though is carried out by the network of sailing clubs around the coast and this is mostly a voluntary effort by people committed to the sport of sailing. For example Wicklow Sailing Club's Round Ireland yacht race run in association with the Royal Ocean Racing Club has been operating for over 30 years. Similarly the international Cork Week regatta has attracted over 500 boats in past editions and has also been running for over 30 years.  In recent years Dublin Bay has revived its own regatta called Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta and can claim to be the country's biggest event with over 550 boats entered in 2009.

On the international stage Afloat carries news of Irish and UK interest on Olympics 2012, Sydney to Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, Cowes Week and the Fastnet Race.

We're always aiming to build on our sailing content. We're keen to build on areas such as online guides on learning to sail in Irish sailing schools, navigation and sailing holidays. If you have ideas for our pages we'd love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected]