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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
Royal Irish Yacht Club's Denis Bergin, Joey Bergin and Rory Byrne are in fifth place at the 76th Edinburgh Cup. It is the second time Bergin and his Sir Ossis of the River IRL 161 team have competed for the Cup in Abersoch
The Royal Yacht Squadron's Graham Bailey, racing the restored Dragon Bluebottle – by Royal Appointment – with Will Bedford and Killian Boag, leads the Edinburgh Cup after the first light airs race at South Caernarvonshire Yacht Club at Abersoch in North…
Padraic de Bhaldraithe
Afloat.ie regrets to record the death of Padraic de Bhaldraithe of Barna, Co Galway. A leading figure for decades in the revival of the special traditional sailing and rowing boats of Connemara and their use in Galway Bay, he had…
Join X-Yachts at the Royal Cork Yacht Club on July 13, 2024
Join us at the Royal Cork Yacht Club on July 13, 2024, for an exciting day with X-Yachts IRL. We will showcase the latest generation of the X43, delivered this year, offering a unique opportunity to explore this state-of-the-art yacht.…
Sean Hanley's HB31 Luas from Royal Cork Yacht Club competing in Royal Cork's Evening Summer Leagues
Strong fleets are continuing to race in the Royal Cork's evening cruiser leagues out of Crosshaven in Cork Harbour. Eighteen yachts are sailing the June/July Thursday evening league in Spinnakers and Whitesail. Twelve are sailing with Spinnakers, six in Whitesail.…
The Howth 17 Isobel (Conor & Brian Turvey) in classic form, on track to win the Lambay Race 2024 while being chased by Peter Courtney's Oona, which finished third
Even by the antique standards of many local one design classes in Ireland, the 125th (Quasquicentennial) Celebrations last year of the 1898-founded jackyard-topsail-setting Howth 17s were quite something, with the class's Event Captain Dave O'Shea seeing through a busy and…
The sunny island. Galway Bay SC Cruising Group gathered recently in Inishbofin on a day which shows that the sunshine lingers on in the islands as the clouds build over the Twelve Bens
Experienced West Coast sailors know that their Atlantic seaboard's rainy reputation is only part of the story, as the conspicuous mainland mountains tend to draw down two or three times as much rain as the less elevated offshore islands. The…
The restored ship’s cabin, where Irish polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton spent his last hours is delivered to the Kildare museum, which is named after him
The restored ship’s cabin, where Irish polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton spent his last hours, has been delivered to the Kildare museum, which is named after him. The cabin from The Quest, which was anchored off south Georgia when he…
Jelly Baby is one of four J122s but the only Royal Cork one, racing in IRC Zero at Volvo Cork Week Regatta
Next week's 2024 Volvo Cork Week Regatta has released its 'initial' class bands for a 60-boat spinnaker fleet racing across four IRC divisions: Zero, One, Two and Three.  Each division is published below (and downloadable as an excel file) with…
Lucia Cullen and Alana Twomey at the 29er European Championships in Poland
Lucia Cullen and Alana Twomey finished fourth in the women’s category at the 29er European Championships in Gdynia, Poland. The Dublin-Cork duo was in fourth place overnight going into the last day of racing and were hoping to move up…
Royal St. George's Team Jaguar of Martin Byrne, Adam Winkelmann and John Simms finished fifth at the British Dragon Northern Championships
Glandore Harbour's Lawrie Smith won the British Dragon Northern Championships by a margin of four points from the Royal Yacht Squadron's Graham Bailey in a 24-boat fleet at South Caernarvonshire Yacht Club, Abersoch in North Wales on Monday. A tight finish for…
A clear winner with a race to spare, Eve McMahon retained the ILCA 6 U21World Championship title 30 points ahead of her closest competitors
Irish Sailor of the Year Eve McMahon retained the title of ILCA 6 U21 World Champion in style at Viana Do Costello, Portugal on Monday. As Afloat reported previously, McMahon emerged as the clear victor, finishing 30 points ahead of…
Ambassador Dr  Jilan Wahba Abadalmajid visited Kinvara in County Galway as one of her first public engagements since recognition by the Irish government of Palestine as a state
Support for Gaza where the death toll of Palestinians has surpassed 38,100 will be highlighted by the south Galway community of Kinvara during next month’s Cruinniú na mBád regatta. Kinvara has a long record of supporting the Palestinian people, and…
Greystones Sailing Club's canting keeler Opal will be heading south in this Friday's (July 12th) Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) to Queenstown (Cobh) Race that has attracted a quality fleet of offshore racers ahead of Volvo Cork Week Regatta in Cork Harbour starting on July 15th
The "K2Q 2024 " Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire) to Queenstown (Cobh) Race sailing instructions have been published (downloadable below) as a quality fleet builds for the 160-miler this Friday (July 12th). Orgainsers ISORA and SCOR say entry remains open for the race, and last…
Denis Bergin's Sir Ossis of the River from the Royal Irish Yacht Club competes at this week's Dragon Edinburgh Cup in Abersoch, North Wales
Up to five Irish Dragons compete are due to compete at Tuesday's 2024 Edinburgh Cup in North Wales as the build-up to September's Dragon Gold Cup at Kinsale Yacht Club continues. At the same venue in Abersoch, Martin Byrne's Royal St.…
Howth Yacht Club's Eve McMahon has a14-point winning margin after ten races sailed at the U21 ILCA 6 World Championship in Viana Do Castelo, Portugal
A dominant performance in Portugal sees Ireland's Eve McMahon enter the final two races of her 2024 ILCA 6 Under 21 World Championship title defence with a 14-point lead on Monday (July 8th). After Sunday's windiest day of the competition…
A Parade of Sail brought some magic to the river at Foyle Maritime Festival as dusk set in and a flotilla of tall ships bedecked in lighting
It's been two years since the River Foyle in Ireland's northwest hosted one of the country's biggest nautical celebrations. Traditionally held in July, the Derry festival was brought forward a month to coincide perfectly with the start of the school…

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]