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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
Seven crews line up for Delta Lloyd
Seven Irish crews are on the entry list for the Delta Lloyd regatta starting on May 26, with representatives in six Olympic classes. Sisters Annalise and Claudine Murphy will compete in the Laser Radial class, with Ross Hamilton in the…
Preparations continue apace in Dun Laoghaire for this weekend's ICRA Championships at the Royal St. George YC. The 'club of the year' is installing new pontoons in front of its club house in time for the Cruiser event and in…
With a close to perfect score, Andrew Fowler's team of Sam Hurst, Brendan Fafliani, John Sheehy, Nick Smyth, Guy O'Leary, Peter Bailey and Phil Lawton from Royal St George YC in Dublin, won the 2010 Royal Thames Cumberland Cup from…
Rating Cost of Composite Rigging to be Reduced in 2011
The rating cost of composite standing rigging will be reduced with effect from 1st January 2011 following a recent meeting of the IRC Technical Committee. The Committee noted that the technology of composite standing rigging has matured significantly in recent years…
HYC use Twitter & Ustream for live event coverage
Howth Yacht Club continue to march ahead as early adopters of new media, streaming details from their HYC Helmsman's Championships in real-time over the web. Using a combination of live tweets from Twitter and streaming vide on UStream (courtesy of…
Double-handers head for Tuskar
A fleet of top-class double-handers will streak across Ireland's south coast in the next two days as part of a 1,000-mile race beginning and ending in the French port of Caen. The Normandy Race sends the crews of Class 40s…
Irish team take Cumberand Cup
A Royal St George YC team have taken the prestigious Cumberland Cup over the weekend after a near-flawless series of racing. The team went into the final stages without dropping a single race, and claimed what's thought to be the…
Antix Wins ICRA's Cork to Dublin Offshore
Cork Harbour saw the start of the feeder race to Dun Laoghaire for the Liebherr ICRA Nationals last Friday writes Claire Bateman. This race was mandatory for yachts wishing to compete in the Commodore's Cup to be held in the Solent in August and…
Top Crews to the Fore at Royal Alfred's Baily Bowl Weekend
There was a familiar ring to this evening's Royal Alfred prizegiving roll call where Baily Bowl trophies were presented to top ranked sailors in four separate classes. A weekend of one design class action produced a testing five race series. Light to…
Apollo's Strengths Revealed in RORC's DeGuingand Bowl
Nigel Passmore’s turboed TP52, Apollo had a cracking De Guingand Bowl winning overall and IRC Super Zero, in some style but it didn’t start off very well as Nigel Passmore explains; “We did have the worse possible start to the race,…
Newcomer 'Poppy' Wins ISORA Holyhead to Dun Laoghaire Race
From an entry list of 30 sailing boats, 19 boats came to the line in Holyhead for the 3rd ISORA race – 75 miles to Dun Laoghaire. The fleet, that was missing many of their “regulars” had four newcomers to…
Cork Crew Celebrate return to Clipper Round the World  Race
The significance of the day was not lost on those taking part in Clipper 09-10 round the world yacht race as ten yachts lined up on the start line for the short sprint to Jamaica, the crew of Cork, Ireland racing…
DBSC J109s Strut Their Stuff on Dublin Bay
J109s were to the fore in Cruisers One sailing this afternoon as westerly winds of six knots but gusting up to double that speed – and shifting by 30 degrees – made for plenty of place changes for the Dublin…
Four fleets Contest Royal Alfred's Baily Bowl
There will be a light start this morning to the Royal Alfred's Baily Bowl event on Dublin bay. The Dublin Club will provide a full weekend of racing run from the National Yacht Club. Three races on Saturday and two…
Five Boats Fight for ICRA's Offshore Honours
Only five boats came to the line for the inaugural Irish Cruiser Racer Association (ICRA) Offshore Trophy at Crosshaven tonight but what the sailing fleet lacked in numbers it made up for in close competition inside Cork Harbour. Under spinnaker…
Royal Cork Boats Prepare for Dublin Departure
Sailing Boats are preparing to depart Crosshaven tonight on the Irish Cruiser Racer (ICRA) feeder race to Dun Laoghaire. Among those competing is the new Roxy 6 pictured below at Crosshaven marina by Bob Bateman. Ireland's entire Commodore's Cup team…

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]