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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
Defending champion quarter-tonner Snoopy rounds a leeward mark on day two of the Unio ICRA National Championships on Dublin Bay ahead of overall leader Jupiter, a J24 from Wicklow skippered by Conor Haughton
The Wicklow J24 crew of Conor Haughton, Jonny Flood, Charles Heather and Garrett Kinnane have a four-point lead over defending IRC champion Quarter Tonner Snoopy in IRC Class Three after five races sailed on Saturday at the Unio ICRA National Championships…
The first race of the day of the UNIO ICRA Nats 2024 from the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire produced a healthy mix under IRC, with scratch boat Searcher (above) going round just under the hour at 57:36
Dublin Bay sparkled again for the second day of the UNIO ICRA Nats 2024 from the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, with today (Saturday's) only change from Friday being that the wind has been more directly from the…
Colm Bermingham's Elan 333 Bite the Bullet from Howth on one of Saturday's windward-leeward courses at the Unio ICRA Nationals 2024 on Dublin Bay
After five races sailed at the Unio ICRA Nationals 2024 on Dublin Bay, Colm Bermingham's Elan 333 Bite the Bullet from Howth continues to lead by a point in both non-spinnaker IRC and ECHO divisions at the Royal Irish Yacht…
Inclusive surfing at Benone Beach hosted by the Loughs Agency with the Mae Murray Foundation and Long Line Surf School
Northern Ireland’s Loughs Agency recently held a day of inclusive surfing sessions at the North Coast’s Benone Beach, in collaboration with the Mae Murray Foundation and Long Line Surf School. The initiative welcomed participants of all abilities aged eight and…
Royal Cork's James Dwyer and his Swuzzlebubble crew keep a heel on their Half Tonner Swuzzlebubble in a light air race of the Unio ICRA National Championships at the Royal Irish Yacht Club on Dublin Bay
Royal Cork's James Dwyer looks likely to complete a successful defence of his ICRA IRC Two crown after scoring three wins from three races on Saturday's second day of competition at the Unio ICRA National Championships at the Royal Irish…
Michael Blaney's After You Too... (to windward) and Eoin O'Driscoll's Kernach locked in a port tack duel after rounding a leeward mark on day two of the Beneteau 31.7 Irish Championship at the Royal Irish Yacht Club
Defending Beneteau 31.7 champion Chris Johnston in Propsect leads into Sunday's final races but only has a one point margin over Royal St. George challenger Michael Blaney in After You Too... (Above) Chris Johnston's Prospect leads downwind and (below) her…
The 56-metre British-flagged Bayesian sailing yacht sunk off the coast of Porticello, near Palermo, Sicily
Prosecutors in Sicily have widened their investigation into the sinking of the super yacht Bayesian on August 19th. Seven people died in the sinking during an early morning storm off the Sicilian coast, including yacht owner and tech entrepreneur Mike…
Here be J/109s, racing on Friday in the UNIO ICRA Nationals 2024 on Dublin Bay. This well-established and versatile class is so successful in meeting Dun Laoghaire's needs that it is now excelling the historic success of the Dublin Bay 24s
While most of the population looked forward to this weekend's forecast good weather, Ireland's cruiser-racer sailors had mixed feelings. For the projections for Day One (Friday) highlighted the possibility of calm in Dublin Bay. This was the situation as the…
Tom Dolan at the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec Gijon finish on 29 August 2024 - I'd much rather be 3 minutes and 32 seconds behind the leader than several hours behind
At around 1 pm on Thursday, Tom Dolan and his fellow competitors in the 55th edition of the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec arrived in Gijón as a pack. The top twenty boats all crossed the line in just five minutes.…
The National 18 Class will race on the Curlane Bank in the 304th Royal Cork Yacht Club Regatta
The annual Royal Cork Yacht Club (RCYC) ‘At Home’ will be sailed from the club’s Crosshaven base on Saturday and Sunday. “This promises to be a great weekend of competitive racing,” according to the club committee. “On Saturday dinghy racing…
The ninth Elmo Trophy will take place in Dun Laoghaire Harbour hosted by the Royal St. George. Yacht Club
This weekend, the ninth Elmo Trophy will take place in Dun Laoghaire Harbour. This youth team racing competition, which started in 2015 with eight teams, has grown year after year to 36 teams sold out this year. Such has been…
Alinghi Red Bull Racing and NYYC American Magic duel on the Barcelona race course
Race officers at the Louis Vuitton Cup managed to get two races completed on the second day of round-robin action (Friday 30 August) before the wind shut down to below the 6.5-knot lower limit average across a zephyr-laden course. Alinghi…
Participants in the 2024 Cong-Galway Race include local sea scouts and dinghy sailors from many clubs
Two Galway Hookers are among a fleet of 40 boats entered for the Cong-Galway race which takes place on Saturday (Aug 31). Six cruisers are among entries from all over the country, with participants including local sea scouts and dinghy…
The 2024 Unio ICRA National Championships at the Royal Irish Yacht Club will mark the sixth time the championships have sailed on the Dublin Bay race track
Light winds on Dublin Bay look set to determine the 2024 Unio ICRA National Championships at the Royal Irish Yacht Club (RIYC) this weekend as 62 cruiser-racers gather for the first race of the 20th-anniversary championship on Friday morning.  The 2024 regatta…
File image of Sir Ben Ainslie
INEOS Britannia skipper Sir Ben Ainslie sought to downplay reports of his mugging at knifepoint in Barcelona last weekend. According to Marine Industry News, it emerged that the four-time Olympic gold medallist was approached on Saturday night (24 August) by…
Emirates Team New Zealand survey the damage to their AC75 ‘Taihoro’ after it took a heavy drop onto its cradle following a crane failure
There was drama at the Emirates Team New Zealand base in Barcelona following the first day of racing in the Louis Vuitton Cup round robin due to a lift-out mishap at dockside. “While lifting the team’s AC75 ‘Taihoro’ from the dock…

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]