Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon

The white Moonduster of 1965 vintage getting under way in Dartmouth in Devon in July 1971 in classic Denis Doyle style, under sail only

Ireland’s Classic Boats Exist In Their Own Right

1st June 2024 W M Nixon

Our header image this weekend may look like an ordinary enough photo of a handsome boat of a certain era getting skilfully underway using sail only. And some of those not of the cognoscenti may think it’s a slightly frantic…

She’s been round the block and then some, but she’s still winning. The newly-acquired Ker 46 Searcher (Pete Smyth, RIYC) won the Round Ireland Race from Wicklow every which way as Tonnere de Breskens for the late great Piet Vroon in 2010, and with her return for 2024’s race as Searcher, she is immediately among the favourites

SSE Renewables Round Ireland From Wicklow Attracts International Offshore Glitterati

25th May 2024 W M Nixon

With recent additions to the entry list including such glitterati as Pete Smyth of the Royal Irish YC with his newly-acquired Ker 46 Searcher (she was formerly Tonnere de Breskens to give the late great Dutch skipper Piet Vroon his…

Colonel Blair Mayne SAS (and later of Royal Ulster YC) with his best mate, getting into battle mood in the North African desert during World War II of 1939-45. Anyone who gets along well with a Jack Russell terrier, while looking so very like superstar actor Liam Neeson before Neeson was born, must have had some redeeming features - even if he was a danger to all when partying in a new kitchen

Ireland’s Atlantic Coast - On A Clare Day, You Can See Everything

18th May 2024 W M Nixon

County Clare is a place unto itself and a magic if challenging coastline for boats, bounded as it is by the Atlantic to the west, Galway Bay to the north, Galway County to the northeast, Lough Derg and the Shannon…

Good old reliables. After a successful season in Ireland in 2023, the First 50 Checkmate XX (Dave Cullen & Nigel Biggs HYC) is Entry No 1 for the three day Howth Wave Regatta, starting Friday May 24th

Howth’s Wave Regatta Storms On To Final Call

11th May 2024 W M Nixon

When it was announced that the three-day Howth Wave Regatta 2024 would be in the last full May weekend of Friday 24th to Sunday 26th, there was a certain thoughtful sucking of the molars among the waterfront pundits. For this…

Classic Dun Laoghaire Saturday scene of the late 1940s/early 1950s. John B Kearney’s own-designed own-built classic 10-ton yawl Mavis of 1925-vintage is poised to race as soon as the breeze fills in, with Skipper Kearney in the companionway, and his housekeeper/PA Miss Douglas - aka Samson or John Dory – determinedly in place to do the steering

Dun Laoghaire’s National Yacht Club Is Benignly Haunted By Spirit of John B Kearney

4th May 2024 W M Nixon

The National Yacht Club, handsomely sited in the southeast corner of Dun Laoghaire Harbour, was certainly looking its part as the current MG Motor “Sailing Cub of the Year” last Saturday morning. The sun shone, and in the crisp onshore…

The Magic Moment. The Dubois 40 Irish Independent, with Tim Goodbody (RIYC) as lead helm, rounds the Fastnet Rock on the way to the overall win in 1987

Royal Irish Yacht Club Puts Head Above Parapet For Admiral’s Cup Revival

27th April 2024 W M Nixon

The Royal Irish Yacht Club of Dun Laoghaire is so far the only club in Ireland which has indicated to Denis Byrne, Commodore of the governing Irish Cruiser-Racer Association and Vice Admiral of the Royal Cork YC, that it is…

The spirit of Dublin Bay. Senior Skipper Tim Goodbody helming his very successful family-owned J/109 White Mischief

Easy Does It…Dublin Bay Sailing Club Moves Smoothly Into Year 140

20th April 2024 W M Nixon

There’s something special about a large organisation which is so attuned to the needs of the many services it quietly provides that it can - naturally and confidently and without fuss - move into action each year in a distinctly…

What’s not to like? The RORC’s new Griffin Project features the Jeanneau Sun Fast 30 OD. Very zippy - yet ultimately recyclable - she is light years away from the first club-owned Griffin, a 44ft gaff sloop of 1938 origins

Royal Ocean Racing Club’s Griffin Training Scheme Focused On The Channel Hot Spot

13th April 2024 W M Nixon

With the RORC’s new Griffin Project for training young sailors recently launched in a blaze of publicity, there have been the usual demands that something similar should be delivered for Ireland. But Sailing on Saturday would suggest that, over the…

The Italian Class40 Alla Grande Pirelli in the 2023 Normandy Channel Race, which took in turning marks at the Tuskar and Fastnet Rocks. The first of the Class40 fleet – the French boat Unicorn – confirmed entry this week in the 2024 SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race from Wicklow on June 22nd

This “Wipeout Weekend” Should Demonstrate Resilience of Ireland’s Sailing

6th April 2024 W M Nixon

This weekend is expected to see the Entry List for the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race on June 22nd going through the 40 mark, with a good selection of boats already providing a healthy mix of internationally-renowned craft lining up…

Claud Monet’s impression of the August 1900 Sailing Olympics at Le Havre. This was the first modern Olympic Sailing event ever completed on salt water, and was the second stage of a two-part regatta in which Part 1 had been raced on the River Seine near Paris in May. A sailing event had been scheduled for the first modern Olympiad at Athens in 1896, but persistent gales on the Aegean Sea made its staging impossible. Image Courtesy MM

Will Sailing’s Olympic Divide Get Ever Wider?

30th March 2024 W M Nixon

Olympians are different from you and me. In the final analysis, that’s what being Olympian is all about. For whether we like it or not, the vivid clarity of an Olympic medal is one of the few ways that sailing…

Storming along to the big win in Tangier. Eve McMahon was to show grace under pressure in maintaining a very clear lead in the ILCA U21 Worlds in Tangier

Irish Sailor of the Year Eve McMahon is Spirit of the Age

22nd March 2024 W M Nixon

Friday evening’s announcement of the Irish Sailor of the Year 2023 title for 19-year-old Eve McMahon at her sailing home of Howth Yacht Club well captures the zeitgeist of mid-2020s Ireland, not least in the fact that the title holder…

The ultra-mix of sailing and the inland waterways – the century-old Shannon One Design Class transitting the lock in Athlone during their annual downriver race from Lough Ree to Lough Derg

Ireland’s Inland Waterways Assert Their Individuality As IWAI’s 70th Anniversary Arrives

16th March 2024 W M Nixon

If you were trying to think of the most utterly rural town in all Ireland, Longford would certainly be among the top ten - maybe tops of all. And our rustic view of it is emphasised by the fact that…

The Last Hurrah. The late Clayton Love Jnr and regular crewman Neil Hegarty revel in racing the 505 Miss Betty in IYA Dinghy Week in July 1970 at Ballyholme on Belfast Lough. This was to be Clayton Love’s last actively dinghy racing season, and it was also the last Dinghy Week, as the event had become too big for most sailing centres to handle

Clayton Love Jnr 1929-2024

9th March 2024 W M Nixon

The widely-mourned death of Clayton Love Jnr of Cork at the age of 94 may leave a void in the lives of his very large circle of family, friends and colleagues in many parts of the world and numerous areas…

Heather Kennedy, daughter of Ruffian 23 designer Billy Brown of Portaferry, with National Yacht Club Commodore Peter Sherry at the presentation of the shared MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year 2024” award

MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year 2024 ” Award Jointly To National YC & Ruffian 23 Association In Celebration Of Family & Friendship In Sailing

2nd March 2024 W M Nixon

Friendship, family and sailing enjoyment expressed enthusiastically through quietly efficient organisations - that was the warm theme which dominated Thursday evening’s convivial gathering in the National Yacht Club on Dun Laoghaire waterfront. The successful hosting club and the Golden Jubilee-celebrating…

Ballyholme Bay looking southeast – it is ideally located between town and country, and used to be within handy bike free-wheel distance of Bangor Grammar School

The Northern Lights of Ireland’s Top Sailing

24th February 2024 W M Nixon

Back in the day, Bangor Grammar School was seen by a small but significant sector of its pupils as a sailing school with a grammar problem. This was in a time when it was an establishment of friendly size, located…

ICC Commodore David Beattie’s steel cutter Reespray at the Fastnet Rock. As her hull lines are based on Joshua Slocum’s world-girdling Spray, this means that the basic shape is more than 250 years old

Irish Cruising Club Celebrates Four Years Of Success With David Beattie As Commodore

17th February 2024 W M Nixon

Last night’s Annual General Meeting of the 1929-founded Irish Cruising Club in Dublin was more than the usual agenda-guided review of a year of activity afloat, a time-honoured long look at twelve months of varied cruising and voyaging on waters…