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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
Aussie teen battles horrendous condtions
Ocean-sailing Aussie teenager Jessica Watsonhas suffered her third  knockdown in a fortnight in her bid to be the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe. The teenager has managed to escape the worst effects of 12m, boat-breaking swells on the way…
Cancer Survivor’s Challenge On The Horizon
Cancer survivor, Mary Falk, sets sail on Sunday 6th June in a bid to complete, for the sixth time, the 2000 mile Shetland Round Britain and Ireland Race and raise the final part of her staggering £100,000 goal for The…
Match Racing registration open on Fri
Registration for the Dublin Match Racing Open, to be held in the Royal Irish YC on June 12/13, opens this Friday. Meanwhile, independent financial planning firm, Investwise, are all set to sponsor the Dublin Match Racing Open to be hosted…
Light Hyeres winds blow no good for Irish
Each race counts in Hyères! The 2010 SOF Hyères  has reached its half way mark but the programme is well behind schedule with few races sailed in each class. Irish sailors have failed to break into the top half of…
Katanca Stays on Top in ISORA
A change in the finishing time of the winning sailing yacht in the first race of the 2010 ISORA series has led to a reissue tonight of Saturday's race results but the placings still stand. Double-handed entry, Katanca, an Elan…
This May Bank Holiday weekend (01-03 May 2010) over 300 boats from seven different classes will race on three separate courses in Dublin Bay. The format for this year’s event is based on that of the ISAF Youth World Championships…
Light and tricky at Hyeres
Light airs continue to dominate the Hyéres Olympic Sailing Week, a regatta traditionally known as one of the most blustery on the circuit. Winds today are again in the five to 10 knot range, far from the typical Mistral conditions…
The Royal St George has announced that long-standing club manager Paul Finnegan is to retire in August, with Ann Gill stepping into the role from May 10 onwards. Ann is an accomplished professional with a strong and successful background in…
Cork Week 2010 - Three Months And Counting
It only happens every other year and that is probably a good thing, because it takes Crosshaven that long to recover! With less than three months to go, Cork Week 2010, is taking shape with a huge variety of boats…
New battle to land €55m Volvo Ocean Race
DUN LAOGHAIRE-Rathdown County Council is determined not to miss the boat for the next round of applications due for the Volvo Ocean Race writes Claire Murphy in yesterday's Evening Herald. The council is already discussing the 2012 competition after missing…
Howth Yacht Club Celebrates Successful Spring Warmer Series
A highly successful 6-race Spring Warmer One-Design Sailing Series concluded at Howth Yacht Club on Saturday 24th April, having attracted 42 boats in four classes which experienced widely varying conditions over the three weekends of the event. The light winds…
Sonatas on song at Scottish Series
All men and women are equal on the race course at the Brewin Dolphin Scottish Series, not least in the highly competitive one design Sonata class. The 22 foot pocket sized keelboat provides some of the best value racing at…
New sites for Round Ireland
Two new websites have sprung up over the weekend in support of the 2010 Round Ireland Yacht Race. The Wicklow town sailfest now has an online presence, as do Team Daft, the Daft.com-sponsored entry from blind adventurer Mark Pollock and…
43 boats enjoyed mixed conditions in Dublin Bay for the Laser SB3 fleet's start-of-season event from the Royal St George, the Mitsubishi SB3 Easterns. Gareth Flannigan, defending champion, did the business and his McCready Sailboats team of Jeremy Tomalin and…
Records Broken For First ISORA Race
A record number of starters came to the start line at the East Mark in Scotsman's Bay on Saturday. 22 boats started from an entry list of 23 boats. This has not been seen in ISORA for many years. The…
Familiar Names at Front of 2010 DBSC Fleet
Winds gusting to 26–knots ushered in the 2010 Dublin Bay Sailing Club Summer season this afternoon for a combined fleet of up to 300 yachts sailing on Dublin Bay. Inspite of new course configurations and some new race marks there were…

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]