Menu

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
Strong Winds Launch Caribbean 600
As if by magic, the tradewinds blew into the starting area off English Harbour, Antigua after several days of light winds. With 22 knots or more in the gusts. The strong winds launched the RORC Caribbean 600 fleet into action…
Carrickfergus Navigator Ian Moore Plots Aegir Caribbean Course
On loan from the Oracle America's Cup Team, Northern Ireland ace navigator Ian Moore is the navigator on board the Carbon built 80-footer Aegir for this week's RORC race in the Caribbbean. Antigua Yacht Club is buzzing with excitement, with…
Maximus Tops HYC Brass Monkey Race
HOWTH YACHT CLUB. BRASS MONKEYS SPRING (RACE) 20/02/2011 Class 2 HPH: 1, Maximus P Kyne; 2, Papillon B O'Halloran; 3, Rum Doodle D Byrne; Class 3 HPH: 1, Just Good Friends M Carroll; 2, Invader G Glynn; 3, Scullduggery G…
Bank Holiday Youth Champs to Expect 300
May Bank Holiday weekend (29 April – 02 May) over 300 sailors will compete in Dublin Bay in seven different classes (Laser Radial, Laser 4.7, 420, Feva, Topper, SL16 and Optimist). For youth sailors, this event is the most crucial…
2011 Scottish Series Entry Form Online Now
Clyde Cruising Club, organisers of the Brewin Dolphin Scottish Series, is encouraging sailing enthusiasts to sign up online for this year's event, with this years entry form and notice of race now available online by logging on to the dedicated…
National YC Recruits New Club Manager
National Yacht Club Manager, Padraic Conneely is retiring and the Dun Laoghaire club is advertising the position this morning in the Irish Times.  In a message to members this week Commodore Peter Ryan said Conneely 'has been a huge part…
Entries Roll in for Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta
Forty entries are already in for Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta, a fixture widely expected to be the biggest in Ireland this season when it sets sail on Dublin Bay in July. Organisers are expecting up to 500 boats to keep…
Dun Laoghaire Announces Debut of Two Handed Fleet for Volvo Regatta
Two handed IRC racing makes its debut in July's Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta organisers have confirmed this week. Up to six boats have expressed interest in the new intiative and the organisers say the class will race over a mix…
Will the 80th Round the Island Race be another Record Breaker?
Peta Stuart-Hunt highlights some interesting entries for the 2011 Race taking place on 25th June Since online entries for this historic 80th Anniversary Race opened in mid-January, the Entries team has been besieged, already processing 367 entries (at the time…
HYC Hires Coaching Development Manager
Howth Yacht Club has announced its first ever coaching development manager. Graeme Grant has been appointed to the position to help enhance the skills of members across all levels. The 36-year-old Scot comes highly experienced, with Irish Sailing Association (ISA)…
Sailing Firm Fined Over Safety Breaches
The director of a sailing firm who sent students across the Atlantic on an unsafe yacht with an unqualified captain has been fined and ordered to pay costs by a British court. According to the Isle of Wight County Press,…
Superyacht Fleet Expected to Visit London Olympics then Ireland
London is expected to provide a great SuperYacht venue for the Olympics and the hope is that some of the massive visitors may in turn continue cruising in Ireland according to www.YachtsLondon.com who are providing services to help yachts arrange…
Two Irish Skippers among 71 for La Solitaire du Figaro 2011
Two Irish skippers are among the 71 'pre-entries', including 24 rookies, for the La Solitaire du Figaro race. Paul O'Riain and Mick Liddy, both from Dublin, will race back into their home port on the only foreign leg of the…
Photography from 2007 Soveriegn's Cup
A remarkable performance throughout all 8 races by John Twomey and his team aboard Shillelagh resulted in a clear victory in division 3 IRC by a margin of some 12 points to swoop the coveted Sovereign's Cup. Dave O'Sullivan served…
Sovereign's Cup 2005 - Photo Review
Anthony O’Leary’s Corby 35 ‘Antix’ won sailing's Sovereign’s Cup at Kinsale Yacht Club, and Paddy Gregory’s Elan 31 ‘Benola’ the Portcullis Trophy.  Eamon Conneely’s Transpac 52 ‘Patches’ was the winner in Division 0 IRC, gaining National Champion title for that…
Looking Back at Photos from the Sovereign's Cup 2003
Sailing Entries for the 2003 Sovereign's Cup regatta hit the 100 mark as Brown Thomas and Jacobs Engineering announced that they were back on board as day sponsors. Entries from Sligo 'round to Dublin complemented the enthusiastic and popular Welsh…

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]