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Galway RNLI lifeboat operations manager Mike Swan
How a wise kayaker rescued by east Cork’s Ballycotton lifeboat signed up as a volunteer and Galway city’s cross-agency rapid rescue system are among topics on RTÉ Radio 1’s special Seascapes series tonight. The final episode of the three-part series…
President of Irish Sailing, John Twomey
Sailing is in a very healthy state the President of Irish Sailing told the organisation’s annual general meeting in the Royal Cork Yacht Club at Crosshaven in Cork Harbour. “We’re growing the membership and participation on the water in Ireland…
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
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…
RNLI Trustee Paddy McLaughlin, also a volunteer at Red Bay RNLI in Cushendall, pictured with Stephen Conway, Red Bay RNLI Lifeboat
A man overboard exercise with Antrim’s Red Bay all-weather lifeboat and the experience of a dog walker rescued by Cork Harbour’s Crosshaven lifeboat are among topics on tonight’s (Fri, March 22) RTÉ Radio 1 special issue of Seascapes. The programme,…
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
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…
Aran island lifeboat coxswain Aonghus Ó hIarnáin and the O'Connell family - Daniel, Lena, Lena's mother Margaret Gill, and Jack and Olive (their younger brother Eoghan had left for a match)
An Aran island family with several generations of volunteering with the RNLI lifeboat are featured in the first episode of a special series of RTÉ Radio 1’s Seascapes to mark the RNLI’s bicentenary. The three-part series also carries an interview…
The Marine Institute’s new chief executive, Dr Rick Officer
Good news – there is a sustained trend towards improvement in fish stocks in Irish waters, the Marine Institute’s new chief executive, Dr Rick Officer says. Speaking to Wavelengths, he says “huge credit” is due to Irish fishers for weathering…
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
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
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
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…
Poet Keith Payne
Currachs and naomhógs are among the only sea craft built upside down, and the expertise dates back generations. Poet Keith Payne learned all this and much more when he found himself working on a Dunfanaghy currach over 16 weeks. He…
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
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…
Campaign Manager of the environmental group Fair Seas - Dr Donal Griffin
“It is not good enough to designate parts of the marine environment as conservation areas without talking to the people, groups and businesses which use and depend on an area for their livelihoods and recreation.” That comment from the Campaign…
Sailing history comes alive in Half Ton Classic racing at Kinsale. The 1976 Farr-designed Swuzzlebubble - now owned by James Dwyer of Royal Cork – is current ICRA “Boat of the Year”, while the blue Humphreys-designed 1985 Checkmate XV won outgoing ICRA Commodore Dave Cullen of Howth the Half Ton Classics Cup in Belgium in 2018
The weather may have decided that winter is far from gone in the last couple of days, but in Dun Laoghaire this morning, the annual conference of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association at the Royal Irish YC remembers only sun-filled…
Seagrass which moves hypnotically with the waves and grows in meadows in certain coastal areas is an
Open water swimmers at Galway's Blackrock tower tend to swim east, but scientists would love it if they sometimes swam west – weather permitting. That’s an area rich in seagrass in Galway Bay, and one of a number of habitats…
Laurent Charmy’s J/111 SL Energies Groupe Fastwave from France was the narrow overall winner of the 2022 SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race from Wicklow, closely ahead of the J/99 Snapshot (Mike & Richard Evans, Howth YC)
It’s one thing to declare an interest in contesting an up-coming iteration of the biennial 704-mile SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race from Wicklow. But it is quite something else to divvy up an entry fee, and sign on the dotted…

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