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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
Fireball Dinghy Fleet Preparing for Sligo World Sailing Championships
At the end of every season there is always speculation about who will be buying new boats and what new combinations will be sailing together the following season. The advent of a World Championships heightens that speculation and with the…
Cruising Association Plans Mediterranean Sailing Seminar
Every year, at the Cruising Association's London headquarters in Limehouse, it holds a one-day seminar for those planning to cruise in the Mediterranean. Open to both members and non-members, this year's event was a sell-out with more than 90 cruising…
Ireland to Join World's Top Team Racers for UK Battle
In less than a month's time, Dun Laoghaire's Royal St. George Yacht Club will join the world's best team racers  in the United Kingdom for the sixty-second edition of the Wilson Trophy British Open Team Racing Championship, hosted and organised…
Eddie Jordan Racing...On Water
Irish F1analyst Eddie Jordan might be better known for exploits on tarmac than the high seas but it did not stop the 63-year old Dubliner sailing a smart race to win in the south-eastern Caribbean Sea today in day one…
Hamburg Gets Ready to Host World's Biggest Ports Festival
Billed as the world's greatest Port Festival, five of the world's largest and most beautiful tall ships – and at least one, the Mir, is also entered for the Tall Ships race in Waterford in June – have announced their…
Two Committee Boats Go on Duty for Dublin Bay Sailing Club
In a break away from traditional 'hut' starts on the West Pier this season Dublin Bay Sailing Club's Thursday night sailing will feature two committee boats on duty. The new procedures are detailed in the 2011 Dublin Bay Sailing Club…
National Yacht Club to Host Dublin Bay Sailing Club August Challenge
Dublin Bay Sailing Club's annual Cruiser Challenge for Cruisers 0, 1, 2, Sigma 33 and 31.7’s will be held from 26th-28th August 2011. This year the sailing weekend event is hosted by Dun Laoghaire's National Yacht Club. The notice of…
Sailing to Success at Kinsale Optimist Trials
Fourteen year old Dun Laoghaire sailor Sean Donnelly was in top form sailing off Kinsale yesterday (SCROLL down for Photos by Bob Bateman) to win four of eight races in the first leg of the 2011 Optimist dinghy sailing trials. All…
Ben Ainslie Ultimate Winner in Palma
The medal races and Women Match racing finals have crowned today the sailing champions in the 42 Trofeo Princesa Sofia in Palma. The Irish Sailing team did not qualify for the final rounds. The Women Match racing finals were a…
No Medal Races for Irish as Annalise Slips to 11th in Palma
Unfortunately an 18th and 9th scored in yesterday's sailing has dropped Annalise Murphy of the National Yacht Club to 11th overall, just one point off qualifying for the medal race.  It means none of the Irish campaigners in Palma will…
Sail Training Ireland to be Launched Next Week
The new Tall Ships body co-oridinated by the Irish Sailing Association (ISA), Sail Training Ireland for Youth Development, (STIYD) will be launched next Thursday at the Dublin Port offices next Thursday, April 14th.   Since the Department of Defence declared they…
Ben Ainslie Extends Lead in Finn Dinghy
Despite light and shifty sailing conditions which brought mixed results for most leaders, during the fourth racing in the Princesa Sofia MAPFRE competition, Ben Ainslie in the Finn class and Dorian van Rijsselberge in the RS:X, were able to sail…
Irish Teams Selected for Team Racing World Championships
The trials to select the Irish sailing teams for the ISAF Team Racing Worlds were sailed in Dun Laoghaire on Saturday 2nd of April. Organised by the Irish Team Racing Association, using the facilities of the Royal St George Yacht…
World ARC Circumnavigation Rally Goes Annual
World Cruising Club have announced that from 2014 the World ARC round-the-world sailing rally will become an annual event; starting every January from Rodney Bay in Saint Lucia. World ARC is currently a biennial event, starting in January and finishing…
Annalise Bounces Back into Top Ten
The third day of sailing at the Trofeo Princesa Sofia MAPFRE was not the easiest but a better one for Ireland's Annalise Murphy in the Olympic Laser Radial class who took eighth and seventh to move from 14th to ninth…
Sailor with Mayo Roots Named as Skipper of Northern Ireland Clipper Entry
Yachtsman Mark Light, his grandaprents are from Mayo, has been named as the skipper of Derry-Londonderry for sailing's Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race, one of the ten yachtsmen who will lead teams in the event, and is thrilled…

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]