Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here …. As Winter approaches and onshore activity at clubs begins to focus on annual meetings, conversation topics, I find, seem to focus on perennial issues about the state of…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast ….Tom MacSweeney here…. The three Cork Harbour yacht clubs – the Royal Cork at Crosshaven, Monkstown Bay and Great Island Sailing Clubs – have decided that the format of a combined clubs racing…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast ….Tom MacSweeney here …. Creenan’s hostelry in Ballinacurra village, close to the town of Midleton in East Cork is a hallowed place in the annals of sailing. On its walls hang photographs and…

The death has occurred of Donal Lynch, one of Ireland’s leading figures in traditional boats, as Tom MacSweeney writes. Donal was one of the founding and leading figures in the development of Meitheal Mara, the community and traditional boatyard in…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here …. The marine sector is about to be planned for the first time. This is the development of Ireland’s first national marine spatial plan, about which a public consultation…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here …. That the Royal Cork at Crosshaven is the oldest yacht club in the world is well-known, even if there are some elements who have challenged, though unsuccessfully, that…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast ….  The Squib Class are heading for Lough Derg this weekend where the Yacht Club is holding its annual Freshwater Keelboat Championships at Dromineer. It’s an end-of-season event and, for Squib sailors, follows…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast … Sailing the 27-foot yacht he has owned for 20 years, Jim Doyle helmed Green Sleeves to win the ‘Alta to Starboard Trophy’ in Monkstown Bay. It’s an unusual trophy, made by the…

The restored Ilen has arrived in Limerick. She was sailed there over the weekend from West Cork, reports Tom MacSweeney. Conor O’Brien’s historic 1926-built tradition ketch, the last of Ireland’s wooden schooners, originally built in Baltimore, was restored in a…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney here ….. Sailing is at a “tipping point” across the water in the UK – with the future coterie of potential sailors, the “Millennials” as they are described, taking a…

Hello and welcome to my weekly Podcast …. Tom MacSweeney reporting on current sailing and maritime topics and this week, reflecting on how I have been fortunate during my years of sailing and reporting the sport to meet many disabled…

Hello and welcome to the weekly MacSweeney Podcast … There is no national listing that I can find of the number of incidents in which leisure craft have become entangled in fishing gear in Irish waters. When it happens, this…

Hello and welcome to the weekly MacSweeney Podcast …. It’s been a week with interesting topics, from dirty boats to dirty ports, the pleasant sight of island-racing dinghies but the nastier tale of what submarines might be doing off the…

The annual Cobh to Blackrock Sailing race was once, traditionally, the closing race of the sailing season in Cork Harbour. That no longer prevails as the sailing season has extended over the years into December for cruiser classes and practically…

Great Island Sailing Club in Cobh is running a 'GATHERING OF THE BOATS' event in Cork Harbour this Sunday to highlight safety on the water. Boats from all over the harbour are invited to meet at Foxes Cover at 2pm,…

On last week’s Podcast I wrote about the great Galway Hookers at the ‘Cruiniú’ – the Gathering of the Boats in Kinvara County Galway, a centre of traditional wooden boats. There are other boats sailing in the waters off Kinvara…

The Chairman of the Galway Hookers Association says that these iconic boats deserve support to ensure their future as part of Ireland’s maritime heritage. Dr.Michael Brogan told me in an interview which you can hear on this week’s Podcast (below):…

Robert Louis Stevenson, the Scottish novelist who wrote ‘Treasure Island,’ didn’t have much regard for politicians. “Politics,” he wrote in ‘Familiar Studies of Men and Books,’ a collection of his articles and essays is “perhaps the only profession for which…

It’s great to see young sailors enthusiastic about the sport. Watching Topper dinghy sailors training for their big challenge, with determination and focus, is encouraging. The sport has a future if it can hold onto young sailors. This weekend young…

The family of the RNLI Coxswain who led the Ballycotton Lifeboat in the famous Daunt Rock rescue in 1936, have presented the medals which he was awarded for the rescue to Cork City Museum. The medals, presented to Patrick Sliney,…