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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
An opportunity to clarify your sailing decisions will be provided by the Irish SB20 class association when it stages a racing strategy clinic run in conjunction with the Howth Yacht Club Spring Warmer Series in April. The sportsboat class has also launched…
#Rio2016 - Female athletes with places in this summer's Olympics have been left with a tough decision to make due to the outbreak of the Zika virus in Rio and elsewhere in Brazil. And as Sail-World reports, sailors particularly at…
This morning's first race of the DBSC Spring Chicken series has been cancelled due to strong winds. A fleet of up to 50 cruisers are expected for the first yacht racing series of the 2016 season with racing up to 13th March…
The challenge of a tough and competitive offshore race in the warm and idyllic racing conditions of the Caribbean has been taken up by two teams from Howth Yacht Club that will travel to Antigua to take part in the…
Liam Shanahan was named the 2015 Afloat Irish Sailor of the Year at the Irish Sailing Awards in Dublin. Drawn from a star-studded shortlist, which included Volvo Ocean race winner Justin Slattery; round-Ireland record-setting Sidney Gavignet; and 11-time Paralympian John…
The National Yacht Club has renewed its appeal for club sailor Finn Lynch who is part of a three way mens Laser dinghy trial for Irish Olympic qualification in Palma in March and Mexico in May. The Dun Laoghaire club…
American ESPN presenter Mike Greenberg from the 'Mike & Mike' show reacts to the news that World Sailing boss Peter Sowrey says he was fired for pushing to get rid of polluted Guanbara Bay as the sailing venue for the…
Sailing Instructions for this weekend's DBSC Spring Chicken Series hosted by the National Yacht Club have been published (download a copy below). An estimated fleet of 40 or 50 will be racing each Sunday morning on Dublin Bay from 7th…
volvo_ocean_race_2016
At a time when rival major global sports events are struggling to contain spiralling costs, a report by independent auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has praised sailing’s premier round-the-world event, the Volvo Ocean Race, for halving the price of competing for sponsors.…
sailors_of_year_2015
This afternoon marks two decades since Afloat Magazine inaugurated the Sailor of the Month awards, with their peak achievement of the Sailor of the Year accolade – the latest of which will be presented at the Irish Sailing Association (ISA)…
Following the very positive feedback on its club paddle-boards last season, the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire is carry-on diversifying its water sports activities and has taken delivery of nine RTM Ocean Duo sea-kayaks, thanks to the support of the…
In Irish sailing, January is far and away the longest month. Publishing schedules for the printed Afloat Annual mean that December’s Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month” has to be announced on December 15th. So as though January weren’t quite long…
ICRA_conference_2016
The 2016 ICRA Annual Conference will be held in the Castleroy Hotel in Limerick on Saturday, March 5th from 10:30am until 15:30. Besides a range of topics and open floor Q&As session as part of the agenda this year’s conference…
nigel_biggs
Nigel Biggs’s Checkmate XVI flew the burgee of the Royal Irish Yacht Club at Key West Race Week in mid-January, with a crew including young Irish sailors Adam “Bubbles” Hyland and Cian “Tree” Guilfoyle, alongside Dublin resident Jim Houston. This…
The Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) has appointed Andrew Overton as the new General Manager of RORC Cowes. He has an extensive background in the hospitality industry with experience across a range of unique high quality new business ventures, acquisitions…
#TallShips - The Atlantic Youth Trust is set to host its inaugural conference and gala ball in Galway this March, as the Galway Independent reports. The sail training tall ship project, which recently hailed its inclusion in the new implementation…

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]