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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
There has been damage to Armel Le Cléac'h’s Maxi Banque Populaire XI rudder in the Ultim Challenge and the French solo sailor is heading for a pit stop in Brazil
Armel Le Cléac'h’s Maxi Banque Populaire XI, a giant racing trimaran competing in the solo round the world Ultim Challenge race, has suffered damage to its central rudder after an incident. The Banque Populaire team confirmed the news in a…
Lorient Grand Large confirmed as host of 2024 Double-Handed World Offshore Championship
Lorient Grand Large, Yacht Club de France, and the Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) have joined forces to host the 2024 Double Handed World Offshore Championship. The event will feature a fleet of Sun Fast 30 One Design boats and…
Fireball duo Tom Gillard from Sheffield and Andy Thompson from East Antrim Boat Club in Northern Ireland will take a seven-point lead into the final two races of the 2024 Fireball Worlds in Geelong
Fireball duo Tom Gillard from Sheffield and Andy Thompson from East Antrim Boat Club in Northern Ireland will take a seven-point lead into the final two races of the 2024 Fireball Worlds in Geelong tomorrow as they look to be…
Top class sailing from Finn Lynch put the National Yacht Club sailor into the medal race of the ILCA 7 World Championships in Adelaide, Australia in January
Irish sailors Finn Lynch and Ewan McMahon are battling it out for a spot in the Men's ILCA 7 single-handed event at the Paris 2024 Olympic regatta. With just five months to go before the event begins in Marseilles, the…
Conditions have been described as 'volatile' at the SB20 World Championships in Dubai
Kidzink, the women’s team from the UAE, continues to maintain its lead in the overall standings at the SB20 World Championships in Dubai. The team, skippered by Charlotte Borghesi, has been in fine form, putting up a strong performance in…
Team Malizia is flanked by a flotilla at the Kiel Fly-By on 9 June last year during the penultimate leg of The Ocean Race 2022-23
Organisers of The Ocean Race have confirmed Kiel.Sailing.City as the host of the start of The Ocean Race Europe during a press conference in Kiel on Wednesday morning (14 February). The second edition of the European race, which was confirmed…
Parliament Buildings in Stormont, Belfast, Northern Ireland
Three Sinn Féin MLAs have brought a motion to the newly restored Stormont Assembly for action to save Lough Neagh from its pollution crisis, as The Irish Times reports. MLA for North Antrim, Philip McGuigan described the situation on the…
Saoirse by moonlight off Ibiza at New Year, 1932. Saoirse was rigged as a brigantine when she sailed to Ibiza, but thanks to Conor O’Brien’s willingness to have a notably long main gaff boom aloft on the aft mast, the rig change had been done using the same compact ketch masts that sailed her round the world
Conor O'Brien’s outstanding pioneering achievement was in demonstrating that a sailing vessel as small as his own-designed 42ft Baltimore-built ketch Saoirse could complete a global circumnavigation through the vast expanse of the Southern Ocean, south of the Great Capes. The…
Ben Garner and Sam Williamson racing Tabu Soro at the 2024 Fireball Worlds in Geelong, Australia
The fifth and sixth championship races of the 2024 Fireball Worlds were held on what was supposed to be a lay day, in switchy and gusty southerly winds. The conditions were challenging, with big shifts, big gusts, and some of…
RS Fest 2024 will occur over the weekend of the 6th and 7th of July under the watchful eye of principal race officer John Leech
The RS Fest is back for 2024 after a hugely successful weekend in Blessington last year; this time, the fleets are heading to Lough Derg Yacht Club. The core ethos remains the same of all RS Sailing to have family-orientated…
The ILCA squad representing Northern Ireland at the 2024 Celtic Cup were Lewis Thompson, Daniel Palmer, Charlotte Eadie and Rory Pollard
Ten of Northern Ireland’s Topper and ILCA sailors travelled to Plas Heli in Pwllheli for the Celtic Cup earlier this month (3-4 February). This annual event sees the best youth and junior sailors from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland compete…
A 1720 competing in the second race of the 2024 DBSC Spring Chicken Series on Dublin Bay
The AIB DBSC Spring Chicken Series on Dublin Bay came to an exciting conclusion last Sunday as 'No Show', the 1720 sportsboat, clinched the top spot. The second race of the six-race series saw sunny conditions accompanied by a good…
Dubai hosted a thrilling start to the opening races for the SB20 World Championship
Dubai witnessed a spectacular start to the SB20 World Championship as forty-eight teams, with over 12 nationalities, took to the water for four races. The highly anticipated event commenced with two general recalls due to unstable wind and significant shifts,…
The legendary Commodore John Paul Jones of the US Navy during the American War of Independence against Britain
February the 14th is mostly known as Valentine’s Day, but it has a significance in maritime history far removed from romantic exploits – other, of course, than the romanticism of sailing the seas…..! In 1813, it was the day when…
Roy McKay leads a group of ILCA 7s around the weather mark at the Viking Marine DMYC Dinghy Frostbites at Dun Laoghaire Harbour
After an adverse weather-enforced hiatus of three Sundays without sailing, a reduced Frostbite fleet took to the waters of Dun Laoghaire Harbour to resume activity in the Viking Marine-sponsored Frostbites hosted by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club. While the forecast…
A morning of catch-up. Puppeteer 22 Champion Alan Blay racing his GP14 in hot pursuit of Conor Twohig in Sunday’s intense morning of Frostbite Series racing at Howth, when three races were completed
Although some five day forecasts had made any resumption of Howth’s Frostbites seem unlikely, a sudden change of tone and a very welcome weather window arrived over the weekend. After a three-week enforced break, when each named storm had seemed…

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]