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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
Light north easterly breezes are forecast for the start of Saturday's rescheduled final ISORA Ireland-Wales offshore race of the season from Dun Laoghaire
After three weekends of intense keelboat action on Dublin Bay, ISORA will sail its final Ireland-Wales offshore race of the season this Saturday (21st September). The 80-miler follows an intense season of 15 races, which is set for an exciting end-of-season…
Minister of State at the Department of Transport, James Lawless launched a revised and updated edition of the Code of Practice for the Safe Operation of Recreational Craft at Dun Laoghaire Harbour, Ireland's biggest boating centre
Minister of State at the Department of Transport, James Lawless, has today (17 September 2024) launched a revised and updated edition of the Code of Practice for the Safe Operation of Recreational Craft. The publication of the new Code of…
The T Bourke-sponsored Monkstown Bay Sailing Club Dash for Cash event is a mixed dinghy pursuit race based on the RYA Portsmouth Yardstick system
Monkstown Bay Sailing Club's 'Dash for Cash' race with €600 in prizes for the top three boats will be sailed on Saturday, September 28. The T Bourke-sponsored event is a mixed dinghy pursuit race based on the RYA Portsmouth Yardstick…
In Royal Cork Yacht Club Thursday series Ria Lyden's Ellida was the overall league winner in IRC and Echo Spinnakers
Evening keelboat racing has ended at the Royal Cork Yacht Club in Crosshaven and entry has been opened for the Autumn League which will start on Sunday, September 29 for a series of races over five Sundays until October 27.…
Fireballs enjoyed fantastic conditions at Maccagno, Italy for day three of their European Championship
Fireballs enjoyed fantastic conditions at Maccagno for day three of their European Championship. The fleet again faced an early alarm call for an 8.30am start but racing was postponed for a short while as the breeze was perpendicular to the…
Schull Harbour is waiting to Welcome the cream of Ireland's junior sailors this weekend
In 2023, the All-Ireland Junior Helm Championship was thoroughly blown out of its scheduled September weekend in Schull by what the gloomsters relished as "Inevitable Equinoctial Gales". The event finally touched base in West Cork in November, with Russell Bolger…
Karena and Florence Knaggs Butler of the host club competing at the Irish Melges 15 Championships in Howth
Sailors are invited to come to the Royal Saint George Yacht Club on Sunday, 22nd September, at 09:45 to test out the world's fastest-growing dinghy class writes John Sheehy With 24 Melges 15 dinghies now sailing in the country and…
It takes a while for the full meaning of the double overall win, for Howth Yacht Club in the Maples IRC Euros 2024 this past weekend-plus at the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire, to be fully appreciated out in…
Portaferry RNLI volunteers launch the inshore lifeboat Blue Peter V
Portaferry RNLI were paged by Belfast Coastguard just after midnight on Friday night (13 September) to assist two people onboard a fishing vessel which had run aground close to the entrance of Ardglass Harbour on Northern Ireland’s east coast. The…
Alinghi Red Bull Racing took a morale-boosting win against INEOS Britannia in the Louis Vuitton Cup on Monday 16 September
On what was billed as a potential day of elimination in the Louis Vuitton Cup Semi-Finals, what unfolded turned out to be the complete opposite with both Alinghi Red Bull Racing and NYYC American Magic scoring race wins in difficult…
John Minnis's Final Call II from Royal Ulster Yacht Club on Belfast Lough in Northern Ireland finished third overall in IRC One division of the Maples Group IRC European Championships on Dublin Bay
Two of the three prestigious events hosted by the Royal Irish Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire over the first half of September included five competing boats from Northern Ireland. John Minnis's Archambault 35 Final Call II and Paul Prentice's Sigma…
RORC Vice Admiral’s Cup shines in autumn sunshine on the Solent
While the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s IRC European Championships concluded on Dublin Bay on Sunday, its Solent racing season also came to a conclusion with the Vice Admiral’s Cup with two days of windward-leeward and tight round-the-cans races. High pressure…
The European Fireball championship fleet in Maccagno, Italy
The European Fireball fleet rose early for an 8.30 a.m. start in Maccagno, Italy but the morning breeze failed to materialise, leading to a four-hour postponement. At the afternoon regrouping there was a further short postponement before a 4/5 knot…
Joanne Sheehan, a dedicated DBSC race management team member and a stalwart of the Dun Laoghaire sailing community

Joanne Sheehan RIP

16th September 2024 DBSC
Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is mourning the passing of Joanne Sheehan, a dedicated race management team member and a stalwart of the Dun Laoghaire sailing community. Joanne, who learned to sail with Glenans and was an enthusiastic IDRA 14…
The event at Belfast Harbour is key to the UK Space Agency’s mission to protect the planet and outer space. The meeting aims to explore ways to address port decarbonisation, how to use ports more efficiently via space data, and how to work together to tackle the unique environmental challenges in the maritime industry
Belfast Harbour has become the focal point for discussions related to innovative space-age ideas as it hosts the first-ever European Space Agency (ESA) Port Decarbonisation and Environmental Sustainability Workshop. The event, scheduled to take place on Tuesday, September 17th, will…
A Class Zero race start at the Maples Group IRC Euros 2024 on Dublin Bay with overall class winner Karl Kwok's TP 52 Beau Geste from Hong Kong on left
The Maples Group IRC Euros 2024 on Dublin Bay for the past four days of Thursday through Sunday, with entirely daytime racing hosted by the Royal Irish Yacht Club of Dun Laoghaire, ended on a suitably Camelot note of only experiencing…

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]