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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
Finn Lynch (left) adds 2024 European Bronze to his world championship silver at Barcelona in 2021 after a thrilling final day at the European ILCA 7 Championships in Athens
With a final day turn of speed, the National Yacht Club's Finn Lynch won the bronze medal at the ILCA 7 European Championships in Athens today (Friday, 23rd February 2024) after a three-race final day that ended the weather-hit event.…
Ballyholme Bay looking southeast – it is ideally located between town and country, and used to be within handy bike free-wheel distance of Bangor Grammar School
Back in the day, Bangor Grammar School was seen by a small but significant sector of its pupils as a sailing school with a grammar problem. This was in a time when it was an establishment of friendly size, located…
IRC Zero victory goes to Niklas Zennström’s Carkeek 52 Rán (SWE)
The fourth day of the RORC Caribbean 600, Thursday 22 February, decided the class winners for IRC Zero in the early hours, the Class40 division in the afternoon, and just before midnight the IRC One champions crossed the finish line.…
Satellite image of Lough Neagh
The owner of Lough Neagh’s lakebed has said he is “open to exploring options” amid reports of the return of toxic blue-green algae blooms. But as BBC News reports, the Earl of Shaftesbury has refused to budge on suggestions that…
ILCA 6 class European Championships racing on the final day in Athens
Nineteen-year-old Eve McMahon concluded the weather-hit ILCA 6 class European Championships in 15th place overall.  Already qualified for Paris, the Howth Olympic debutante will compete at the forthcoming French Olympic Week in Hyeres as her final major competition before the Olympics.…
Lymington sailor Hannah Snellgrove will sail the ILCA 6 for Britain at the Paris 2024 Olympics
Lymington sailor Hannah Snellgrove has been selected as the 11th sailor for Team GB at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the British Olympic Association (BOA) announced on Tuesday. The 33-year-old will be competing in the women's dinghy class sailing the…
Donaghdee's Oisin McClelland and Dublin Bay's Cian Guilfoyle are on board French entry Aleph Racing for the 2024 44Cup
Royal Cork Yacht Club's Grattan Roberts is the latest Irish sailor to join the ranks of the high-performance owner-driver one-design racing R44 fleet. Donaghdee's Oisin McClelland and Dublin Bay's Cian Guilfoyle are on board Aleph Racing, Wicklow's Simon Johnson is on…
Finn Lynch leads into the final day of the second Irish Olympic trial for Paris 2024 in the men's ILCA 7 at the European Championships in Athens
Friday's final day of the second Irish Olympic trial for Paris 2024 in the men's ILCA 7 will be a tight contest at the European Championships in Athens. Trials leader Finn Lynch (National Yacht Club) is in 14th place, with…
Maria Erdi from Hungary, the reigning 2023 World champion, leads going into the final day of the Women's ILCA 6 European Championships in Athens
Eve McMahon (Howth YC) improved her overall position in the Women's ILCA 6 European championships in Athens, Greece where she lies 14th overall going into the final day of racing. McMahon – already selected for the Paris 2024 Olympics –…
Ultim Challenge race leader Charles Caudrelier and the ULTIM Maxi Edmond de Rothschild have been in the Azores port of Horta since Wednesday morning
Ultim Challenge race leader Charles Caudrelier and the ULTIM Maxi Edmond de Rothschild have been in the Azores port of Horta since Wednesday morning, waiting for storm Louis to leave the Bay of Biscay and a weather window to open…
As indicated by Afloat on Thursday lunchtime, the Farr 100 Leopard 3 (MON), skippered by Joost Schuijff, and with Royal Cork's Tom McWilliam on the crew has now been officially announced as the overall winner of the 2024 RORC Caribbean 600.…
James McHugh’s Class40 Tquila in action in the RORC Caribbean 600
In what is being hailed as one of the most thrilling finishes in recent memory, the RORC Caribbean 600 Class40 division is set for a nail-biting finale. At 0900 AST on Thursday, 22 February, six of the 11-strong Class40s were…
Much up-dated since she first appeared in 2007, the Farr Super-Maxi Leopard 3 has shown that the RORC Caribbean 600 tends to favour bigger boats
Update 12:45 Thursday, Feb 22: In previewing the RORC Caribbean 600 2024, we made the point that in its 15 years of annual staging, no boat under 50ft LOA had ever emerged as the overall winner, and the smallest top…
Poet Keith Payne
Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Poet Keith Payne learned all this and much more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He…
Because of ferocious weather on the Bay of Biscay Ultim Challenge leader Charles Caudrelier is stopped in Horta, sheltering from the strong gales
In Horta in the Azores Ultim Challenge, leader Charles Caudrlier and his team remain patient. In second place, Thomas Coville crossed the Equator yesterday afternoon while the race’s three sailors were climbing the South Atlantic. On Brest’s Quai du Commandant…
The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race Qingdao crew arrives in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
Chinese sailing teams from the cities of Qingdao and Zhuhai grabbed the top two spots in the seventh stage of the Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. The nail-biting race, stretching over a marathon of 4,000 nautical miles from Airlie…

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]