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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
Three National Yacht Club sailors travelled to Carnac in Brittany to compete in the RS Aero Europeans
The longest day of the year just passed... so we are halfway through summer, aren't we? Events were run across Ireland (and abroad), with the National Yacht Club represented at many of them. The week started on Wednesday with the…
The final race in the Cork Harbour Combined Clubs June League will conclude the four-race series on Friday night
The final race in the Cork Harbour Combined Clubs June League will conclude the four-race series tomorrow night (Friday). The League, organised by the RCYC and Cove SC is being raced in spinnaker and whitesail fleets inside Cork Harbour and…
A 41-boat fleet of Flying Fifteens contested the British Isles Championships at Strangford Lough Yacht Club
A 41-boat fleet of Flying Fifteens assembled at Strangford Lough Yacht Club, Whiterock, this past week to contest the British Isles Championships. This event was last held in these waters in 2018 when the regatta was condensed into three short…
The United States S & S Hiro Maru, skippered by Hiroshi Nakajima, finished its Round Ireland race in Cork Harbour, one of ten boats so far to retire from the 2024 Round Ireland Race
Twenty per cent of the fleet has retired from the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race so far, with some high-profile withdrawals as the remaining 38 monohulls negotiate the final stages of the 700-mile offshore race. As Afloat reported earlier on…
On day five of the Round Ireland Race IRC boats are led by the Lombard 46 Pata Negra (Sam & Andrew Hall, Pwllheli) midway between St Johns Point on the County Down and the south points of the Isle of Man
Thursday (Day 5) 07:30 hrs: With the current weather-dominating Low Pressure area now well north in the Hebrides, and with its centre continuing further away on its northesterly course, in the North Channel the mostly sou-southwest winds in the night…
In Div 1a of the Royal Irish Yacht Club Race Water Wag race Mariposa no. 45, Cathy MacAleavey and Con Murphy made the best of the shifting winds in Dun Laoghaire Harbour
The Water Wag race this evening at Dun Laoghaire Harbour was the Royal Irish Yacht Club (RIYC) Regatta race. Race Officer Tadgh Donnelly had to raise the AP three times due to shifting winds, eventually starting one hour and six…
Pete Smyth and his weary and calm-plagued Round Ireland Race 2024 crew with the Ker 46 Searcher
Wednesday 1900hrs: When Pete Smyth and his weary and calm-plagued crew with the Ker 46 Searcher finally finished the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race at 15:32 this (Wednesday) afternoon, it was intriguing to note that they'd sailed 63 miles less…
The 64 metre superyacht 'Scout' that  berthed recently in Cork’s Kinsale marina
A 64 metre superyacht has berthed recently in Cork’s Kinsale marina. The vessel named Scout was designed by Jonny Horsfield’s H2 Yacht Design. Horsfield, who graduated from Coventry University after studying car design, established his yacht design company in 1994.…
Reigning ISORA champion Rockabill VI is tipped by Mystic Meg for third overall on IRC in the 2024 Round Ireland Race
Mystic Meg will shortly retire to the Wicklow hills, satisfied with her 2024 Round Ireland Race predictions. Once the weather pattern emerged, it was not a hard task, but the size of the leads over the next boats at the…
The 1968-vintage Carina is basically a Jim McCurdy design built in aluminium for Dick Nye, with her underbody modified by Scott Kaufman in 1978. She has now won the major trophy in the classic biennial 636-mile Bermuda Race four times, and continues to achieve an immaculate yacht-like finish with a minimal but perfectly maintained amount of exposed varnishwork
Every time I hear the beginnings of Sinatra singing The Summer Wind, it's immediately accompanied by personal visions of classic American-designed yachts by Sparkman & Stephens, John Alden, PhilipRhodes or - best of all - Jim McCurdy, sailing serenely in…
The Royal Cork Yacht Club Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo saw an opportunity in the new win on day five of the Round Ireland Race
Wednesday 1230 hrs: The meteorological community is in a state of excitement. With climate change and weird weather generally, we’d thought that old-fashioned clearcut low pressure areas heading slightly north of east across the Atlantic were a thing of the…
The beginning of a welcome new chapter. Moonduster hauled over the weekend in Trondheim in Norway
We've always believed that all truly good works are best done by stealth, and so it has proved. On Friday night (June 21st, Mad Midsummmer's Day) we heard a whisper that there'd been movement on the entombed Moonduster in Trondheim…
Hong Kong businessman Karl Kwok has entered the tP52 Beau Geste into the 2024 Maples Group IRC European championships at the Royal Irish Yacht Club on Dublin Bay this September
Hong Kong businessman Karl Kwok has entered the TP52 Beau Geste into the 2024 Maples Group IRC European championships at the Royal Irish Yacht Club on Dublin Bay this September. The entry is one of the first of the expected…
Teasing Machine leading the Round Ireland fleet on Monday 24 June
Tuesday (Day 4) 1930hrs: Eric de Turckheim’s Teasing Machine surprised no one by taking the monohull line honours in the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race at 1921 in Wicklow on Tuesday evening (25 June), writes WM Nixon. Yet a…
Portaferry RNLI’s inshore lifeboat waits for the Strangford Lough ferry service to depart before being recovered back to station
Portaferry RNLI’s pagers sounded on Sunday afternoon (23 June) after Belfast Coastguard received an ermergency position indication radio beacon (EPIRB) alert close to Portavogie. The inshore lifeboat launched at 1.05pm amid good conditions on Northern Ireland’s Co Down coast, with…
A moonlit sky during the Clyde Cruising Club’s North Channel Race
The North Channel Race is a well established offshore event on the Clyde Cruising Club racing calendar, and it was great to see such strong support from the RC35 fleet, writes Jim Dervin. After an 8pm start off Inverkip Marina…

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]