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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
The United Kingdom's Phosphorous II, skippered by Mark Emerson, is lying 1st in IRC Overall, 1st in IRC Class 1 and 1st in Overseas at lunchtime on day two of the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race
Sunday (Day 2, 1330 hrs): Afloat.ie’s predictor Mystic Meg is currently on the button with the suggestion that the Round Ireland Race’s expected weather pattern of a favourable southerly along the West Coast would suit the bigger boats, as they should…
Royal Irish's Pete Smyth in his new  Ker 46 Searcher (FRA 4600)  is now 7/1 in Maritime Meg's odds for the overall handicap winner of the Round Ireland Yacht Race from Wicklow
24 hours into the Round Ireland Yacht Race, the predicted weather pattern is largely coming true as the bigger and faster boats look likely to benefit first from stronger southerly winds along the west coast and high up in the…
Eric de Turckheim's 54ft Teasing Machine continues all alone, now 33 miles ahead of the next boat, and making impressive progress at 12 knots south of Cork Harbour on day two of the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race
Sunday (Day 2, 0800 hrs): The first morning of the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland race finds the fleet making progress along the south coast in winds that developed as a night breeze off the land, but looks like fading…
Eric de Turckheim’s 54ft Teasing Machine has built on her very impressive start and is already sailing her own race
Saturday (Day 1) 1930hrs - Experienced round Ireland racers tend to regard the first leg of the Round Ireland Race from Wicklow to the Tuskar Rock as being the shuffling of the pack, with the serious playing beginning after the…
Cian Guilfoyle of Dublin Bay and Oisin McClelland are in the frame as part of Hugues Lepic’s Aleph Racing the 44Cup in Marstrand, Sweden
The 44Cup Marstrand is providing the nine teams with the full range of conditions. After a heavy day, a light day, Saturday started strongly with an additional feature: intermittent rain. To recover the lost schedule, four races were held; rain…
Kinsale J109 Artful Dodjer has retired from the Round Ireland Race
Finbarr O'Regan's J109 Artful Dodger suffered mast damage, preventing the Kinsale Yacht Club entry from competing in Saturday afternoon's Round Ireland Yacht Race from Wicklow. As Afloat reported earlier, the start was a choppy affair with wind over tide off…
Micky Wright and Alexandra Porteous, sailing ‘Spoof’ from the Royal Corinthian YC at Burnham, were crowned National Squib championships at the Royal Forth Yacht Club
In advance of the final eighth race of the National Squib championships at the Royal Forth Yacht Club, it was apparent that two Squibs were dominating the daily results; they were Micky Wright’s ‘Spoof’ from the Royal Corinthian YC at…
A 41-boat fleet is contesting the 2024 Flying Fifteen British Isles Championships at Strangford Lough Yacht Club this week'
Five race wins (and all scores in the top five) at the 2024 Flying Fifteen British Isles Championships gave Graham Vials and Chris Turner in Floaty McFloatface a comfortable winning margin of 13 points to take the title on Strangford Lough Yacht…
Mark Emerson's GBR 3875X, Phosphorous II and Andrew Hall’s Pata Negra (4669R) at the start of the 22nd SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race
The pre-race favourite Teasing Machine, Pete Smyth’s Searcher and James Neville’s Ino Noir had the best of today’s (Saturday 22 June) classic upwind start in the 22nd SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race off Wicklow in a 16-knot testing southerly…
Eight boats are contesting the spinnaker division, and six are racing for White Sail Honours in the June IRC and ECHO League at Royal Cork Yacht Club. See the photo gallery below
Michael McCann's Etchells 22 Don't Dilly Dally leads Royal Cork Yacht Club's June IRC League on five points after three Thursday evening races sailed. Fiona Young's Albin Express North Star trails by six points on 11, having not competed on June 20th…
The Carkeek 45 Ino Noir (James Neville). With this Round Ireland Race favourite, everything possible has been done to minimise fuss as she moves through the water. If you see this much bow-wave, then she’s going very fast indeed
Saturday’s 1 pm start of the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race is the high point of the biennial Wicklow Maritime Festival, while also concluding a series of shoreside events which included a Royal Ocean Racing Club breakfast in the Royal…
It was a gentle start for the 162 boats setting sail from Newport in the 53rd Newport Bermuda Race
162 boats set sail from Newport, racing towards the Gulf Stream and kicking off the 53rd Newport Bermuda Race. For this first time in its 118-year history, the American race set sail from Fort Adams in Newport. As Afloat reported…
The RNLI charity has entered the yacht Prime Suspect in the upcoming SSE Renewables Round Ireland race
The RNLI has entered a yacht in the upcoming SSE Renewables Round Ireland race, in recognition of the 200th anniversary of the charity. The race, as Ireland’s premier offshore yacht race, is held every two years and departs from Wicklow…
The start of the 2022 Round Ireland Race from Wicklow. Headwinds are likely for Saturday's 2024 start
Wicklow Harbour is gearing up for the start of the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race, which will commence at 1 p.m. on Saturday. The biennial 700 nautical-mile offshore race will see 49 boats vying for top honours in the challenging…
The SB20 European Championships will be staged in Malta this September
The Royal Malta Yacht Club is awaiting registrations from Ireland, among other countries, for its staging of the 2024 SB20 European Championships in September. France, the UK, Hungary, Singapore, South Africa, and Moldova have already confirmed participation. "We are awaiting…
The grey-hulled superyacht Norn crossed Dublin Bay at 10 am on her way into Dublin Port
The $250 million megayacht NORN, owned by billionaire Microsoft tech tycoon Charles Simonyi, is visiting Dublin this morning. The battleship grey-hulled vessel crossed Dublin Bay at 10 am on her way into Dublin Port.  The brand new NORN is currently sailing under…

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]