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
Look Out for Autumn Afloat!
Look out for Afloat's Autumn 2011 issue published in the first week of October. The full colour issue includes the latest Irish sailing and boating news including exclusve reports on diving on the Lusitania, How the Rambler 100 crew were…
Waterford Tall Ships Win People of the Year Award
Tall Ships Festival Waterford 2011 received a People of the Year Award at the ceremony at Citywest hotel on Saturday for the enormous voluntary and community effort which led to a hugely successful festival. The event, with the support of…
Forty Boats Prepare for Liffey Cruise
Forty cruising boats will sail up the river Liffey to spend a night near the the replica famine ship Jeanie Johnston. The East Link bridge will lift and the Samuel Beckett bridge will swing open at noon on Saturday 24…
Cavatina Takes Win on Ringabella Course
The sixth race in the Royal Cork 'O'Leary Insurances' sailing League in Cork Harbour was a busy affair for Race Officer Micheal Lynch last Thursday night. He sent classes one and two out the harbour to Ringabella Buoy. Classes three and…
J24 Euros Open in Howth, Strong Winds Cancel Practise Race
The BMW J/24 European Championships were officially opened last night with a ceremony on the forecourt in front of the Howth Yacht Club clubhouse on the podium erected by the sponsor but a practise race scheduled for this afternoon was…
America's Cup Racing Underway in Plymouth (Pics Here)
Top sailing teams are training towards the 2013 America's Cup in Plymouth on the English South Coast this weekend. The new format, with an initial series in 45ft catamarans building up towards a final in 72ft cats, was supposed to…
Hurricance Katia Provides Exhilarating Sailing on Dublin Bay
Colin Byrne's X-34 Xtravagance was the winner of a reduced Class one in breezy conditions on Dublin Bay yesterday. Racing in strong southerly winds - that Met Eireann says is the tail of Hurricance Katia - provided an exhilarating penultimate…
1720s and Mansfield Enjoy New Lease of Life
'The big man is back' reports WM Nixon this morning in the Irish Independent's Sailing Column. Reports of the demise of the 1720 are greatly exaggerated he concludes in a nice write up for the class and new champion, former…
New York Crew Set To Commemorate 9/11 Afloat
The crew of New York, a 68-foot ocean racing yacht taking part in the Clipper 11-12 Round the World Yacht Race, is set to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as they race from Rio de Janeiro towards…
 Italian Victory, Ireland Fourth at Star European Championships
Another first place in the penultimate race for Italians Diego Negri and Enrico Voltolini sealed their series-long domination and overall victory at the Star European Championship (2nd-10th September) at Dun Laoghaire yesterday. Irish Olympic campaigners Peter O'Leary and Dvid Burrows…
Dublin to Hamble in 24 Hours - Team Sanya's Video
One minute it's trips round the bay with Miss World, canapés at the Royal Irish Yacht Club and corporate hobnobbing in Dun Laoghaire. The next it's a wet and windy ride from Dublin to Hamble in 24 hours. It's the…
O'Leary and Burrows Slip to Fifth at Star Euros
Lighter winds saw Peter O'Leary and David Burrows drop to fifth place overall and Italians Diego Negri and Enrico Voltolini continue at the top of the leaderboard after three more races at the Star European Championships in Dun Laoghaire. The…
World's Top Match Racers Compete in Nations Cup Final
Crowning the world's best match racing nation, the Grand Final of the ISAF Nations Cup comes to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA from 13-18 September. Hosted by Sail Sheboygan, the competition will see some of the finest sailors from across the globe…
Tight Competiton for Squibs, SB3s and Elites at Royal North
Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club has completed its keelboat fixture sponsored by Brewin Dolphin consisting of three fleets; RS Elites, SB3s and Squibs, racing six races over two days. The RS Elites was the joint largest fleet this year…
RS Fleets Gather in Cushendall
Sailors from across Ireland and the UK are due to arrive in Cushendall today and tomorrow for the RS 200/400 National sailing championships. The three-day event rounds off Cushendall Sailing and Boating Club's 2011 sailing season, during which the club…
42-boat fleet for BMW J24 Europeans at Howth
Over 200 sailors from nine countries will compete in the BMW J24 European Championships which start at Howth Yacht Club next Monday (12th), hard on the heels of the Star Europeans in Dublin Bay. Measurement and registration take place between…

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]