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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
Clipper Yacht Derry-Londonderry to be Officially Welcomed to City During Foyle Days Festival
The Derry-Londonderry yacht, skipper and crew will be visiting the city from 20-22 May 2011 ahead of the start of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. At 40,000-miles Clipper 11-12 is the world's longest yacht race and will get…
Vroon's Ker 46 Makes Victorious Start to the RORC Season
Irish boats – or at least those with strong Irish connections – were to the fore in this weekend's Royal Ocean Racing Club Solent fixture, the De Guingand Bowl race providing another exciting chapter in the 2011 RORC Season's Points…
Joker and White Mischief are Baily Bowl Winners on Dublin Bay
Joker was the winner of the Royal Alfred's J109 Baily Bowl prize and White Mischief was the Sigma 33 winner following a one day event on Dublin bay at the weekend. The regatta featured a merger of results with Dublin…
420 Class Releases Instructional Video
The International 420 Class Association has launched a free online Training Video (scroll down for video)  to provide coaching and training tips for both the beginner and experienced 420 sailors. Sailors are always looking for ways to improve their sailing…
Racing Update: Third in Melges Pre-worlds, SB3 Worlds, Gung Ho top on Dublin Bay, ISORA, Foynes to Fenit
Conor Clarke's Melges 24 finished third overall at the Melges pre-worlds event in Texas yesterday. Let's hope it is a good omen for Irish sportsboat sailors at world championships on either side of of the Atlantic this morning. Clarke is…
Ireland's Clarke Third Overall at Melges Pre-Worlds
Ireland's sole entry in the  Pre-Worlds Regatta at the 2011 Melges 24 World Championship in Corpus Christi, Texas  has finished third overall.  A seventh and a sixth score yesterday saw Nathan Wilmot at the helm of Conor Clarke's IRL 607…
14 Races to Decide SB3 World Title
Worlds Preview: Racing for the 2011 SB3 World Sailing Championships 2011 begins tomorrow and runs until Friday 20th May hosted by the Royal Torbay Yacht Club in Torquay, UK. 11 Irish boats are entered. Scroll down for Video. 103 entries…
Big Turnout Urged for Turbine Race
Offshore boss Peter Ryan is urging as many boats as possible to get invovled in the next ISORA race on May 28th from Pwllheli to Wicklow but also to make it a great offshore weekend by participating too in the…
Xpletive Wins ISORA's Pwllheli Day Race
An 11 mile beat to Gwylan Islands was a challenging part of ISORA's race three – the Pwllheli Day Race –  and the crew on the J109 Sgrech made the best of the upwind leg getting to the Islands well…
Royal Cork Trio Among 11 Irish to Contest SB3 Worlds
Royal Cork SB3 trio Mel Collins, Kieran Dorgan and Killian Collins are among 11 Irish boats entered in this weeks SB3 World championships on the English South coast at Torbay.  Irish crews are also coming from Howth, Dublin Bay and…
SB3s Give Thumbs Up to New Dublin Bay Courses
The SB3s have given a thumbs up to the introdution of the new Thursday night Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) courses and who wouldn't with such a thrilling downwind leg last week? 'So many marks, loads of decisions and loads…
Sailing Determined to 'Stand on Podium' in 2012
Irish sailing bosses are determined to "stand on the podium" at the 2012 Olympic Games. http://www.afloat.ie/sail/ http://www.afloat.ie/sail/events/olympics-2012/ That was the message from last week's briefing by Ireland's four Olympic 'water sports' of canoeing, rowing, swimming and sailing, covered in The…
Gung Ho Does the Double on Dublin Bay
Grainne and Sean O'Shea's Gung Ho from the Royal Irish Yacht Club repeated last Saturday's Cruisers III success with another win in blustery conditions on the Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) course this afternoon writes our Dublin Bay Correspondent. The…
RS900 Put Forward as Women's Olympic Skiff Contender
Following ISAF's final choice of sailing events for the 2016 Olympics, including a women's skiff, RS Sailing has announced it plans to develop the RS900 to compete for this role. While that selection decision is yet to be made by…
Regatta Entry Deadlines Looming
Deadlines for entry in to a number of this season's key sailing regattas are looming. Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta's significantly reduced early bird entry rate for the July 7th event will end on Monday and offshore racers intending to race…
O'Keefe's Tux Wins Royal Cork Race
Mary O'Keefes' Tux, an X-332, was the winner of last night's IRC class one fleet in Cork Harbour, a night of perfect sailing conditions reports Hugh Mockler. In class two Kieran and Liz O'Brien's Magnet, an MG335, scored a second…

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]