WM Nixon
William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland for many years in print and online, and his work has appeared internationally in magazines and books. His own experience ranges from club sailing to international offshore events, and he has cruised extensively under sail, often in his own boats which have ranged in size from an 11ft dinghy to a 35ft cruiser-racer. He has also been involved in the administration of several sailing organisations.
SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race From Wicklow Sees Entries Doubled In A Fortnight
6th April 2022 Round Ireland
When this year’s SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race 2022 was top of the agenda on Afloat.ie a fortnight ago, it was in the context of Wicklow Sailing Club being in double celebratory mode. They’d already logged 18 high-quality early entries…
The past two years would have been difficult enough for Irish sailing as we navigated our way - usually with reasonable success – towards keeping our sport as active as possible through various manifestations of the pandemic regulations. But in…
America’s Cup 2024 at Barcelona to be Raced in International 15 Metre Classic Cutters
1st April 2022 America's Cup
As the dust settles on the global kerfuffle over the torrid venue selection process for the 37th America’s Cup Series in 2024 with Barcelona taking the prize, it emerges from leaked documents that the final big money agreement includes various…
Crosshaven’s Harry Durcan Leads Munster Techies To National Intervarsity Keelboat Champs 2022
29th March 2022 Howth YC
The last weekend of March in Ireland is usually not noted for an almost-dangerous amount of highly-radiated sunshine and light breezes. But Race Officer Scorie Walls had to cope with both at Howth in putting through the full 18-race programme…
The programme for the “cultural voyage” of the 56ft restored Limerick trading ketch Ilen to London in late April and through the first fortnight of May continues to take shape. The ship herself is now back in her birthplace at…
America’s Cup Hosting: Barcelona’s Bazooka Bid Blows Cork Harbour Out of the Water
26th March 2022 W M Nixon
The revelation that the mighty Spanish sailing resort and port city of Barcelona has been secretly putting together a powerful hosting bid for the 2024 America’s Cup in the heart of vibrant Catalonia has been bruising news down Cork Harbour…
Aidan Tyrrell of Cork was about as far as it was possible to be from the status of a nationally-known sailing figure. It was a situation that chimed well with his intensely private nature. Yet throughout Ireland, there were many…
SSE Renewables Round Ireland Yacht Race Is St Patrick’s Parade For Sailing In Ireland
19th March 2022 W M Nixon
For most of us, the pandemic has been a matter of two years in limbo. And it maybe isn’t over yet, even if everyone is behaving as though we’re well into the end game. But for gallant little Wicklow Sailing…
DBSC Spring Chicken Feathers Ruffled But Now Reset And Smoothed In Final Results
17th March 2022 DBSC
Some people find saying "sorry" very difficult, but DBSC's Winter Wunderkind Fintan Cairns has given us a graceful example of how to do it with his re-setting of the final results for the latest Spring Chicken Series, which concluded at…
Student Keelboat Nationals Will Pick Up The Pieces At Howth On 26th-27th March
15th March 2022 Howth YC
Time was when the Student Yachting Worlds in France was quite the thing, and never more so than in October 2008 when National Universities Champion Nin O’Leary of Cork Institute of Technology won it for Ireland from a very international…
Lough Ree Clinkerfest To Celebrate Our Classic Boat-building Heritage With Sailing Sport
12th March 2022 W M Nixon
While the sailing programme during the past two years has managed to be played out afloat in a truncated form whenever changing regulations permitted, anything which involved a significant shoreside element of socialising was either cancelled completely, or else moth-balled…
With Irish sailing life struggling to return to normality, we find we are facing it without someone who could put it all into perspective. Dermot Burns, Honorary Archivist to the Royal Cork Yacht Club for many years, passed away peacefully…
The search for the remains of Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic-exploring achieved success today with ghostly images of the remarkably well-preserved vessel being sent to the search expedition. Afloat has more on the story here
It’s good news that a proper Classics Division is going to be included in Volvo Cork Week in July, and it’s even better news that one of the first to step up to the plate is Opposition, the gold standard…
There have been many fond and favourable responses to our recent Appreciation of the late Ken Ryan, Ireland's sailing administration polymath who was the living embodiment of the old saying that if you want anything done, and done well and…
After a couple of years of remote communication through pandemic times, Saturday’s Irish Cruiser Racer Association AGM & Conference in the National YC had such an already-packed agenda - and in an inevitably socialising setup too - that getting the…
One minute it’s winter, and a socially-constrained pandemic-plagued winter at that. And next thing you know, it’s summer, freedom is declared, and our clubs are switching into instant overdrive as sailors go crazy trying to compensate for two years of…
Leaks in boats are generally not considered a good thing, even if the recent case of a patriotic Ukrainian crewman trying to sink his Russian arms-manufacturing oligarch employer's superyacht in Mallorca as a protest against the Putin invasion drew widespread…
One of the most entertaining events of the constrained pre-Christmas season was the All In A Row charity event for all-comers - provided they were oar-driven – in Dublin’s River Liffey on Saturday, December 11th 2021. It mustered an exceptionally…
Silver for Cork, Bronze for Howth in Spanish Olympic Week Won by Young Ukrainian
2nd March 2022 Youth Sailing
The rising young stars in Ireland's ILCA 6 aka Laser class have had a very successful outing to the seasonal opener of the XVII Andalusian Olympic Week in southern Spain. In a hugely popular win for the times that are…
