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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
John Malone and the Lough Ree YC team blast downwind in their sb20 during the Lambay Race 2024, part of Howth's Wave Regatta
The long-forecast serious rain didn't reach the Wave Regatta venue at Howth until 2200hrs yesterday (Saturday 25th May), and even then, most of the power had gone out after a day during which there'd been about twice as much sunshine…
15 boats are contesting the Flying Fifteen Western Championships in Connemara
National Champions Niall and Ronan O'Briain of Flying Fifteen Chonamara lead the 15-boat Flying Fifteen Western Championships after two races sailed in overcast and cool conditions with intermittent rain off the Galway coast. The National Yacht Club's Shane McCarthy and…
Inistearaght Race prizewinners- L-R (back row) SCORA Commodore Daragh Connolly, Overall IRC winner, Chris Power Smith of Aurelia, sponsor James Matthews of The Matthews Centre,  ECHO winner Paul Tingle of Alpaca, Daniel Fitzgerald of Aurelia, Dave Cullinane of Kinsale Yacht Club, Front row Zixi Dong and Jamie Tingle
Finishing in a sub-one-day elapsed time frame, Royal St. George Yacht Club's Chris Power Smith, on board his J122 Aurelia, won line honours and IRC victory on Saturday in Kinsale Yacht Club's eight-boat offshore Inistearaght Race. Having won line honours…
The National Yacht Club's Tom Shanahan took the gun in the J109 Ruth in IRC One in the AIB-sponsored DBSC Saturday Series
Dublin Bay Sailing Club's fifth AIB Saturday race of the 2024 season was sailed on May 25th in blustery south easterly winds on a sunny Dublin Bay. There were several reasons that turnouts were down outside of this afternoon's European…
Blustery conditions inside Dun Laoghaire Harbour for the first day of racing at the 'George Invitational' Team Racing Championship hosted by the Royal St. Geoge Yacht Club and attracting 22 teams
Elmside Neighbours lead the 'George Invitational' Team Racing Championship after a colourful ten rounds sailed at Dun Laoghaire Harbour this afternoon. Set against the backdrop of the home of Team Racing in Dun Laoghaire, the Royal St George Yacht Club…
David Evan and William Draper, the 2024 GP14 O'Tiarnaigh Challenge winners, with their trophy at Mullingar Sailing Club
The GP14 O'Tiarnaigh Challenge at Mullingar Sailing Club proved to be a thrilling event with 30 entries and 29 boats competing on the start line. The competition served as excellent preparation for the upcoming World Championships in Pla Heli in…
New York-Vendee makes its mark on the Big Apple with glamour trials, haute cuisine and big thinkers while previewing the Vendee Globe form book. IMOCA Fortinet - Best Western is pictured before Manhattan
The wind gods only partially delivered for the NY-Vendee fleet competing in the Vendee Liberty exhibition speed trials on upper New York Harbour on Friday with puffs of breeze deciding the fortunes of the fleet. Battling north and south winds…
Ireland’s Tom Dolan (right) and his French co-skipper Paul Morvan celebrate  seventh place in the 740-mile Trophée Banque Populaire Long Offshore Race
Ireland’s Tom Dolan and his French co-skipper Paul Morvan this morning finished a gruelling 740 miles long offshore race for the Trophée Banque Populaire Grand Ouest in seventh place from a star-studded field containing some of the most successful French…
The Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club hosts the first of the four waterfront clubs’ 1-day regattas on Saturday 8th June
While some major regattas of a national and international variety are scheduled for Dun Laoghaire later in the “summer”, the local regatta scene gets underway in two weeks when the Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club hosts the first of the…
She’s been round the block and then some, but she’s still winning. The newly-acquired Ker 46 Searcher (Pete Smyth, RIYC) won the Round Ireland Race from Wicklow every which way as Tonnere de Breskens for the late great Piet Vroon in 2010, and with her return for 2024’s race as Searcher, she is immediately among the favourites
With recent additions to the entry list including such glitterati as Pete Smyth of the Royal Irish YC with his newly-acquired Ker 46 Searcher (she was formerly Tonnere de Breskens to give the late great Dutch skipper Piet Vroon his…
Line ahead towards the misty Hill of Howth on Day One of Wave,with the Dun Laoghaire-based ultra-black First 8 Allig8r chasing towards success in class
From a selective look at the damp and occasionally drizzly weather stats issued from Howth today (Friday, May 24th), you might be tempted to talk of “hot racing on a soft day” to describe the first outing in the Porche-sponsored…
Trainee tall ship: An amazing opportunity for young sailing enthusiasts is to take place on board the schooner Spirit of Falmouth with ‘training voyages’ based out of Cork Harbour. In addition, there will be a second similar voyage for adults. Both voyages take place in July.
Here’s a chance for teenagers in Cork with an interest in life at sea to give it a go on board and experience a replica of a 19th-century sailing tall ship. As CorkBeo writes, the youth sailing charity Sail Training…
Squib racing at Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club on the southern shore of Belfast Lough
Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club on the southern shore of Belfast Lough has a long-established Squib fleet, and this weekend (25th/26th May), will host the Northern Championships. The entry list (download as a PDF below) is a respectable 22…
In a nod to the original Pickie to Pier Swim race, which ran from 1910 until the mid-1980s, the 200 participants will now swim an 800-metre course from Skippingstone Beach on the west side of the Bangor Bay to Pickie, the site of a Fun Park at Pickie to the tip of the Eisenhower Pier, and then loop back to the starting point at Skippingstone
On the North Down coast there are among the many open water swimming groups, the Chunky Dunkers at Donaghadee and the Brompton Beaus and Belles near Carnalea and no doubt some of them plus dozens of other will be part…
Ryan Wilson’s Mat1010 Elixir from Quoile YC and Carrickfergus SC competed in May's Killyleagh Open Event on Strangford Lough
Last Saturday (18th), thirty turned out in six classes at Killyleagh Yacht Club on the western shore of Strangford Lough for the Keelboat event, which incorporates the Crooks Cup and Westward Trophy. A steady Northerly breeze and sunshine made for…
John Minnis' A35 Final Call II, pictured above competing at the Howth Yacht Club hosted ICRA National Championships in 2023, returns to Fingal waters this morning (Friday, 24th May) for the first races of HYC's Porsche Wave Regatta
Howth's three-day Wave Regatta 2024, the biennial seafest with Porsche as lead sponsors, rolls into action this morning (Friday, May 24th) with a total of 104 entries, ranging from the veterans of the 1898-founded Howth 17 class to many of…

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]