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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
Sailing Determined to 'Stand on Podium' in 2012
Irish sailing bosses are determined to "stand on the podium" at the 2012 Olympic Games. http://www.afloat.ie/sail/ http://www.afloat.ie/sail/events/olympics-2012/ That was the message from last week's briefing by Ireland's four Olympic 'water sports' of canoeing, rowing, swimming and sailing, covered in The…
Gung Ho Does the Double on Dublin Bay
Grainne and Sean O'Shea's Gung Ho from the Royal Irish Yacht Club repeated last Saturday's Cruisers III success with another win in blustery conditions on the Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) course this afternoon writes our Dublin Bay Correspondent. The…
RS900 Put Forward as Women's Olympic Skiff Contender
Following ISAF's final choice of sailing events for the 2016 Olympics, including a women's skiff, RS Sailing has announced it plans to develop the RS900 to compete for this role. While that selection decision is yet to be made by…
Regatta Entry Deadlines Looming
Deadlines for entry in to a number of this season's key sailing regattas are looming. Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta's significantly reduced early bird entry rate for the July 7th event will end on Monday and offshore racers intending to race…
O'Keefe's Tux Wins Royal Cork Race
Mary O'Keefes' Tux, an X-332, was the winner of last night's IRC class one fleet in Cork Harbour, a night of perfect sailing conditions reports Hugh Mockler. In class two Kieran and Liz O'Brien's Magnet, an MG335, scored a second…
Contango Wins in Perfect Sailing Conditions on Dublin Bay
Barry Cunningham's well sailed Corby 33 Contango excelled on a long spinnaker run on Dublin Bay tonight to produce a fine win in class one IRC. With 15 knots from the west gusting up to 25, rarely are conditions more…
Madeira Becomes Clipper Stop-Over
Madeira has secured a visit by the ten-strong fleet competing in the Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race which, at 40,000 miles, is the world's longest race. Ireland is entered in the race courtesy of an entry from the…
US Cutter Eagle On Its Way to Waterford
The US Coast Guard cutter Eagle has set sail on its 75th anniversary voyage to Europe - with Ireland being its first port of call. Captain Eric C Jones, who pilots the US Coast Guard's training vessel and goodwill ambassador,…
ICRA Awarded Sailing Club of the Year
The Irish Cruiser Racing Association is the Mitsubishi Motors/Irish Independent Sailing Club of the Year for 2011, with the members recording remarkable achievements both locally and internationally.The award was celebrated in style last night in Dun Laoghaire. Scroll down for…
Equinox Shines in Howth IRC Class One
Equinox, the well known X-332 campaigned by the McDonald family was tonight's winner of Howth Yacht Club's Wednesday night racing in IRC class one. Second was a tie between the Sigma 400 Trinculo (M. Fleming) and the Hughes/Harris campaigned Tiger,…
McKee and Smyth are Flying Fifteen Northern Champions
The Flying Fifteen Northern Championships took place in the picturesque village of Whitehead at the weekend and were hosted by County Antrim Boat Club in their newly renovated clubhouse. 22 crews descended on the town full of hope in what…
Northside Dragon Wins in Howth
Jay Bourke's Etchell, Northside Dragon was the winner of tonight's Howth Yacht Club scratch race for the keelboat class. Second was Fetching, Quinn/O'Flaherty and third Simon Knowles' Jabberwocky. In the SB3s Gareth May's Investwise was first, Shane Murphy's Dinghy Supplies…
Grasshopper II Makes the Jump on Dublin Bay
The National Yacht Club Trapper 300, Grasshopper II, (Kevin and John Glynn) – one of two Trapper's racing on Dublin Bay this year – made light work of the scratch First 28 Chouskikou (R.Sheehan/R.Hickey) and the Sonata 28 Asterix (Counihan/Meredith/Bushell)…
Round Ireland Winner to Contest RORC's De Guingand Bowl Race
The Royal Ocean Racing Club season continues to be extremely popular with another bumper entry for the De Guingand Bowl Race starting on May 14th. Over 75 yachts are expected on the Squadron Line this Saturday morning, ranging from cutting…
Murphy Wins UK Laser Qualifier
National Yacht Club Olympic campaigner Annalise Murphy won the UK Laser Radial Qualifiers in North Wales at the weekend. It was a short, sharp affair with no wind in Pwhelli on Saturday. She scored a 1,1,6 in the three races…
ICRA to Lift Club of the Year Award on Wednesday
The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) has been awarded the Mitsubishi Club of the Year award and the presentation of the famous ships trophy will be made at the Royal St.George Y.C in Dun Laoghaire this Wednesday 11th at 19.…

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]