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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
A race start at the 2024 J24 Southern Championships off Wicklow
The recent J24 Southern Championships in Wicklow showcased the class's increasing competitiveness, with both seasoned champions and emerging talents putting on impressive performances. Headcase, the European champions, secured first place in the Gold Fleet with a total score of eight…
The winners celebrate on their upturned boats after the conclusion of the 49er medal race in the Bay of Marseille
It ain't over til it's over is an oft-quoted remark in yacht racing, and unfortunately, it is one that rings true this afternoon for Irish sailors Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove, who just missed on a medal in the men's skiff class…
Defending 2023 Overall and Mixed World Champion, Ireland's Clementine van Steenberge (left) heads to Denmark to defend her title with new crew Jessica Riordan
Defending Overall and Mixed World Champion Ireland's Clementine van Steenberge from the National Yacht Club returns to defend her title, this time with her new teammate, Jessica Riordan, the 2023 World Female 29er silver medalist from the Royal St George…
Eve McMahon scored eighth in her first race  at the Paris 2024 Olympic Regatta
Eve McMahon's debut at the Paris 2024 Olympics hit the right note in race one on Thursday when the Irish sailor scored an eighth in her 43-boat Women’s Dinghy fleet. The Howth Yacht Club ace finished a place behind Olympic…
The Cayman Island flagged 45-metre sloop motored into Dublin Bay and anchored off the harbour at Thursday teatime on August 1st and stayed overnight
The superyacht Gitana made a return visit to Dublin Bay on Thursday afternoon (August 1st), nearly two weeks after her maiden call on July 20. The Cayman Island flagged 45-metre sloop motored into Dublin Bay and anchored off Dun Laoghaire Harbour, making a…
Sean Lemass's  First 40, Prima Forte of the Royal Irish Yacht Club, was the DBSC IRC Zero Thursday winner
Dublin Bay Sailing Club's (DBSC) new Committee Boat 'Corinthian' took up her racing duties in gentle conditions when she started races on Thursday (August 1) in light westerlies. Sean Lemass's  First 40, Prima Forte of the Royal Irish Yacht Club,…
Ireland's Finn Lynch in action during the first race of the 2024 Paris Olympics in the Men's dinghy class off Marseille
The National Yacht Club's Finn Lynch is lying 16th after his first two races on the Bay of Marseille in the ILCA7 Men's Dinghy Class. The double Irish Olympian scored a ninth in the first race and 25th in the second,…
Flags at Ballyholme Yacht Club indicated racing is cancelled at the ILCA 6 European Championship on Thursday
Racing in the ILCA 6 European Championship at Ballyholme Yacht Club on Belfast Lough was cancelled today at 1 p.m., as the Race Committee decided that there wasn't enough breeze to run a race. Meanwhile, the competitors resorted to watching…
Ireland's Robert Dickson (HYC) and Sean Waddilove (SSC)  salute spectators before the medal race start in Marseille
Ireland's Robert Dickson (HYC) and Sean Waddilove (SSC) date with destiny will have to wait a little longer as Thursday's scheduled Men's Skiff medal race was abandoned twice in Marseilles at the halfway point. The race was abandoned due to too little…
The J/122 Jellybaby (Jones family, Royal Cork YC) powering along on the Solent at the front of Class IRC2 in Cowes Week
Cowes Week - which concludes at the weekend - has found good sailing conditions in the current difficult overall weather pattern, thanks to the Solent's changing nature as each day goes on, and the dynamic nature of the tides. It…
Howth Yacht Club's Eve McMahon successfully defended her U21 ILCA 6 World Championship in Viana Do Castelo, Portugal
Many sailors might think that the countdown to the Olympics should be a period of calmly keeping fit, and quietly building up concentration as your first race in the Five Ring Circus remorselessly approaches. But multiple title holder Eve McMahon…
Steve Morris is successfully guiding Seol Sionna through boat-building and seafaring with a Shannon Estuary base
Even a fully-equipped ocean-going sailing boat can sometimes find the passage from the Shannon Estuary to Brittany a very challenging proposition. But to do it successfully and competently with a 25ft open sailing boat of traditional style involves a very…
Johnny Treanor and his J112 'Valentina'crew, winners of the Volvo Cork Week Coastal Class, receive the Kinsale Kettle trophy for the best overall performance of the week
Volvo Cork Week had its own exquisite torture in that, until the announcement at the final prize-giving in Crosshaven, people could only guess at which team the secret formula had extracted as "Boat of the Week". It went to the…
Former Minister for Defence Simon Coveney, skippering the Defence Forces crew with his right-hand sailing man Brian Matthews aboard a J/109 at the 2024 Beaufort Cup as part of Volvo Cork Week
Competitors in Volvo Cork Week 2024 thought they'd quite a rugged time following the main programme, even though they were in port every night. But the select Services groups competing for the Beaufort Cup had the full menu, including a…
Ireland's Robert Dickson (HYC) and Sean Waddilove (SSC) finished a difficult 12-race open series with a most consistent scoresheet showing eight top-ten placings to put them second overall going into Thursday's double points medal race final
Going into Thursday’s Olympic men's skiff double points medal race, Ireland's Robert Dickson (HYC) and Sean Waddilove (SSC) lie in second place, five points behind Spain, with New Zealand three points back. The permutations are endless, but a top-four result will ensure…
File image of Newcastle RNLI’s all-weather lifeboat
Newcastle RNLI’s all-weather lifeboat, the Leonard Kent, was launched to assist three people onboard a 28ft yacht which had suffered engine failure some 13 nautical miles east of Ardglass on Sunday (28 July). At around 8.35pm on Sunday evening, the…

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]