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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
Ross and Martha Nolan competing at the RS Feva Irish Nationals 2024 and Grand Prix at Ballyholme Yacht Club
The RS Feva Irish Nationals attracted 25 sailors to Ballyholme Yacht Club on Belfast Lough for three days of exciting racing for the overall title, the Irish Championship, and the RS Feva GP 1, the latter competition for sailors who…
Irish prizewinners at ILCA UK Open & National Championships at the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy (WPNSA) in Dorset were Lucy Ives of Carlingford and RStGYC, Caoilinn McDonnell RSGYC, Zoe Whitford East Antrim Boat Club, Cormac Byrne Ballyholme YC, Tom Coulter East Antrim Boat Club, Fiachra McDonnell  RStGYC and Andrew Kingston RCYC
Irish sailors joined 252 competitors at the ILCA UK Open & National Championships at the Weymouth & Portland National Sailing Academy (WPNSA) in Dorset and raced over six days from 12th - 17th August. Conditions varied enormously from light to…
Moonduster - She has languished, unused, neglected, and deteriorating in a dock in Trondheim, but she is now being restored, and, as Derek Holden reports…
The 'Duster' is smiling again and looking good as restoration and upgrading work continues in Norway. Posting what he describes as a "happy update" on Facebook about the restoration of the legendary Moonduster "from the Duster team here in Norway,"…
This is the second rig failure for the Swiss America's Cup team
During training ahead of the Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta of the America's Cup that starts on Thursday, August 22, Alinghi Red Bull Racing suffered a rig failure onboard 'BoatOne.' In a statement released on social media, Silvio Arrivabene, Co-General Manager…
Youth sailors on the water
Entries are now open for the RYA Northern Ireland Youth Championships taking place at Strangford Lough Yacht Club on the weekend of 7-8 September. Eight fleets will be racing including Optimists, Toppers, ILCAs, RS Fevas and a regatta fleet, and…
Rescue teams are searching the wreck of the Bayesian Superyacht
As the search continues for six missing passengers on the superyacht Bayesian, which sank off the Sicilian coast, Britain’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) has sent four investigators to the scene. The MAIB will be responsible for leading the investigation…
Fireworks over Cork Harbour at Cobh People's Regatta 2024
Cove Sailing Club's Cobh People's Regatta sailed on Sunday (August 18) followed Friday's Titanic Race and brought a good mix of cruiser-racers to the line for the annual event  in Cork Harbour. In Class One Kites IRC, George Radley's corrected…
Dun Laoghaire's new Ker 46 'Tonnerre de Breskens 3' will contest the Maples Group RORC IRC European Championships under skipper Pete Smyth
The eighth edition of the IRC European Championship at the Royal Irish Yacht Club will feature, say the organisers, a wide range of boats in action: high-tech racing yachts, hybrid cruiser racers, pocket rockets, and vintage designs. As Afloat previously…
The place with everything. Howth Yacht Cub's venerable senior Committee Boat returns to port, past the Lighthouse with its summer window-boxes in full bloom
If variety is what you hope to experience in sailing, then Howth is the place to be in action this weekend. Top of the agenda is the 40th Anniversary Championships of the Puppeteer 22 Class, for it was 1984 when…
Jane Kearney and son at Mirror Week in Abersoch, North Wales
Three Irish Mirror dinghies crossed the Irish Sea along with the large GP14 Irish contingent (on their way to the Worlds in Pwllheli)... and drove just an extra 15 kilometres down the road to Abersoch to take part in Mirror…
The Shanahan family's J109 'Ruth' has won two ISORA Offshore races this season
ISORA has amended its 2024 Sailing Instructions and Notice of Race as the fleet heads into its final offshore race of the season on August 25th. The change was made to correct a 'coordination typo' in the document containing two…
Mike Lynch
A technology tycoon of Irish descent is among six people missing after a superyacht sank in extreme weather off Sicily early on Monday morning (19 August). According to RTÉ News, the 56-metre luxury yacht Bayesian capsized during a sudden storm…
Black Jack - en route to line honours victory in June's Loro Piana Giraglia offshore race. She is favourite to repeat this in tomorrow's Palermo-Montecarlo
The 19th Palermo-Montecarlo yacht race sets sail from Sicily’s capital tomorrow (Tuesday, 20 August), concluding the International Maxi Association’s 2023-24 Mediterranean Maxi Offshore Challenge, which started with last autumn’s Rolex Middle Sea Race. While the race is typically a light…
RS 200 and RS 400 prizewinners (left to right) Rob Espey, Mike Ferguson, Henry Start  and Frank O'Rourke at Carrickfergus Sailing Club
The 29 knot gusts and wind against tide on the first day of the RS 200 and RS 400 Irish National Championships at Carrickfergus Sailing Club on the north shore of Belfast Lough led to the cancellation of the first…
Barry McCartin and crew Conor Kinsella, new Irish Fireball National Champions
Barry McCartin and Conor Kinsella are Fireball National Champions after an eight-race series at RCYC Crosshaven over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. As Afloat reported earlier, this was a hotly contested championship with 22 boats competing for the title. Racing on…
In the groove. Salt-water Dublin Bay DMYC sailors Pierre Long (on helm) and son Paul (on trapeze) learning the ways of fresh water as Dart slices through Lough Erne
The Irish Dinghy Racing Association (IDRA) 14s celebrated their 78th season with their National Championship, taking them to Lough Erne Yacht Club just north of Enniskillen in Fermanagh to compete in the 2024 edition of the IDRA 14 National Championships…

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]