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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
Cork Yacht in the Hunt for BVI Honours
#OYSTER –  Stephen and Aileen Hyde's Oyster 56 Lady A from Royal Cork Yacht Club is in the mix for an overall trophy at the Oyster Regatta in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) following dazzling conditions for the third race…
Team GBR Named for Dublin Bay ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships
#DUBLIN BAY 2012 – As the RYA Volvo Youth National Championships 2012 came to a close on Friday (6 April) after four days of adrenaline-charged racing in Cardigan Bay, Sarah Webb Gosling OBE who represented Britain twice at the ISAF…
Action Packed End to Palma's Trofeo S.A.R. Princess Sofia MAPFRE
#OLYMPIC SAILING – After an action packed final day of racing at the Trofeo S.A.R. Princess Sofia MAPFRE, the third of seven ISAF Sailing World Cup Regattas, the overall Standings have been shuffled around with new leaders taking control. Regrettably…
Ireland's Moore 'Disappointed' Not to Win Les Voiles de St. Barth
#Les Voiles de St. Barth – No one said racing in paradise was easy, and on Saturday, the final race day at Les Voiles de St. Barth, crews were again tested with light and variable winds. Tacticians and navigators found…
O'Leary's Antix Gets a Jump in Class One
Saturday proved a difficult one for both competitors and race officials alike at the RORC Easter Challenge Under a grey overcast sky, race three of the series got underway on time in light breeze, but on the second beat the…
Galway Organisers Recruit 400 VOR Volunteers
More than 400 volunteers signed up at the launch of the Get on Board volunteer recruitment campaign to help out with the Volvo Ocean Race Festival in Galway running from June 30 to July 8 and set to attract a whopping 700,000…
UK Laser Sailors in £50K Irish Sea Crossing Challenge
#LASER - A pair of British sailors are set to embark on an intrepid crossing of the Irish Sea using just two single-handed Laser dingies. David Summerville and Steve Cockerill had originally planned to make the crossing in September last…
Home Made Boat Wins Top Award
#Irish Cruising Club Annual Awards – A home-made steel cutter well on the way to completing a three year global circumnavigation has been awarded the Irish Cruising Club's top trophy, the Faulkner Cup, for the second year in a row.…
Espey's Efforts Move Him Closer to Olympic Dream
Although there is little likelihood that any of the five Irish boats sailing in the Olympic classes regatta at the Trofeo Princesa Sofia ISAF World Cup in the Bay of Palma, Mallorca will feature in the medal races on Saturday…
All Eyes on New Boats for RORC's Season Opener
62 boats are entered with the fleet split into IRC classes 1-4 with a separate class for the J/80s. The forecast shows the wind mostly to be under 10 knots for duration of the event, but gusty and with significant…
Tall Ship Sail Training Open to All With Autumn Voyages
#TALL SHIPS - Sail Training Ireland for Youth Development (STIYD) has announced a golden opportunity for the general public to sail on a tall ship. Hot on the heels of the Tall Ships Races visit to Dublin this August, a…
Matt Departs for San Francisco Clipper Challenge
After securing a fourth place win during the most challenging leg so far as part of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race, local bursary representative Matthew Plummer is preparing to join up with members of the Derry~Londonderry yacht this…
Flannigan Wins Ballyholme Ice Breaker Series
It is hard to believe that Easter is upon us and that another BYC Stena Line Icebreaker winter series is over. Once again it was a fantastic series for those competitors who took part with the full range of weather…
Volunteers Wanted for VOR Galway Festivities
#VOLVO OCEAN RACE - Organisers of the Volvo Ocean Race finale in Galway are appealing for 2,000 volunteers to help make the stopover a rousing success. The eight-day festival of the marine, sport, arts and culture, entertainment and food to celebrate…
Groupama Dismasting Leaves Two Boats Racing to Itajaí
Damian Foxall's Groupama is limping towards a haven in Uruguay after being forced to suspend racing from the fifth leg after the mast broke with a second successive victory agonisingly close. Groupama sailing team plan to construct a jury rig…
Irish Dinghy Sailor Wins Optimist Consul Cup
Racing for a huge trophy sponsored by the Estonian Consulate in Denmark Ireland's Sophie Browne has won the Consul cup after an intense period of practice at an  international Sailfast training clinic. The 2012 Consul Cup was dominated by girls…

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]