It’s an idea whose time first came back in 1884, and yet Dublin Bay Sailing Club remains as timely a concept as it ever was. Its official 2023 Opening Day is at Dun Laoghaire today, Saturday, April 29th, even though some DBSC evening racing has been underway since Tuesday. Yet the club is more than ever an idea. Its keenly anticipated and very informative yearbook used to be published in the Spring for all to hold and read on paper, but now it is entirely online, serving a virtual club which only becomes a reality every race day.
For sure, the club has some tangible assets in the form of the modest Race Hut on the West Pier, which works in tandem with two club Committee Boats, and they in turn work with the club’s RIBs on mark-laying, rescue and sundry other tasks. But nevertheless, DBSC exists mainly in the shared consciousness of its members and users (they’re not always synonymous), and through its extraordinary range of voluntary workers, with more than 20 Race Officers and upwards of 80 assistants. Their combined effort result in the manifestation of reality: the fleets of 18 classes racing in what amounts to a couple of regattas per week, for this is Europe’s largest local yacht-racing organisation.
“It’s not quite your usual neo-classical Dun Laoghaire waterfront bricks-and-mortar yacht club house, but it does the business” – DBSC’s West Pier Race Hut is only in place in summer.
“Utilitarian in the extreme” – the long-serving Committee Boat Mac Lir is another of the few items providing tangible evidence of the existence of Dublin Bay Sailing Club as one of Europe’s largest local yacht racing organisations
“SAILING CLUB OF THE YEAR 2021”
As such, it was able to oversee such an efficient utilisation of any relaxing of the COVID regulations that it became the “Sailing Club of the Year 2021”. But now, as we move into fresher and more free times, longtime club volunteer and officer Eddie Totterdell has succeeded Anne Kirwan as Commodore to lead the club in its time-honoured service-providing consolidation and development ethos.
Meanwhile, Ann in turn now has more time to devote to the Golden Jubilee in 2023 of her beloved Ruffian 23 Class, whose continuing good health in Dublin Bay - when it has faded at some other less steady centres - is testament to the committed and civilised nature of Irish society. For while we may enjoy some of the latest modern conveniences and innovations as much as any other people, we know a good and useful boat when we have one, and see little reason for frequent changes simply for the sake of novelty, even if evolution is something we can live with
Thus in its current umbrella form as the co-ordinating organisation for all Dun Laoghaire sailing, Dublin Bay Sailing Club is in its latest successful incarnation. It has moved on quite some distance from the 1884 group, which aimed to provide inexpensive small boat racing for young sailors who felt that their sailing needs were not being met by the three stately bricks-and-mortar clubhouses on what was then the Kingstown waterfront.
“The cream of the fleet” – DBSC racing in 1886, just two year’s after the club’s formation
Yet by the 1890s, when the new club’s Young Turks were themselves maturing to become more affluent and part of the Establishment, the rush to form One-Design classes needed some overall body. And there was Dublin Bay Sailing Club, ready and willing to step into the One-Design organisational vacuum, and ready as well to provide some overall co-ordination for the racing programme, in which regular mid-week evening races were playing an increasingly significant role and causing an accelerated increase in participating numbers.
A mighty leap. Although the founders of DBSC in 1884 were regarded as upstarts by the sailing establishment, their enthusiasm and effective organisation afloat meant that when One-Design keelboat classes started to develop in Dun Laoghaire in the late 1890s, Dublin Bay SC was seen as the natural co-ordinating body. And they started big with the Fife-designed Dublin Bay 25s in 1898 - the class is seen here at full strength around 1903, making a start through the harbour mouth, with the Viceroy Lord Dudley’s Fodhla in the foreground
All this is now so much part of the fabric of the racing programme that it feels as though Dublin Bay Sailing Club has been around ever since Dun Laoghaire Harbour itself came into being. And as public meetings of the Save Our Seafront organisation have revealed, there are citizens of Dun Laoghaire who are so attached to its elegant yet totally artificial harbour that they tend to refer to it as “this wonderful natural feature of Dublin Bay”. Quite. Yet when such a large structure is built out of Dalkey granite, that King of Rocks, then fair play to those who see the harbour in this way - and DBSC too, for that matter.
“This wonderful natural feature of Dublin Bay…” At sea level, the massive construction in Dalkey granite may make Dun Laoghaire Harbour seem to be a natural coastal feature, but an elevated view emphasises its magnificently artificial character
Yet once upon a time, Dublin Bay Sailing Club did not exist. But we can still happily remember sailing across the bay in 1984 to help them celebrate their Centenary when the Commodore was Michael O’Rahilly. Or - more properly - The O’Rahilly, if you want to be pernickety about ancient titles, though Michael himself has always been much keener on getting people sailing than he has been on asserting any rights as the Chieftain of the Clan O’Rahilly.
As your columnist happens to be the Chieftain of the Nixons of Curbah in County Cavan under an hereditary system worked out by my ingenious predecessor Uncle George (who lived to be 103), I can only agree that holding such titles is of doubtful tangible benefit. For we have occasionally driven through Ballyjamesduff in the hope of finding our Land Agent waiting on the town boundary with a Gladstone bag stuffed with rents, but so far have failed for some inscrutable reason to make lucrative contact of any sort.
Back in 1984, you had to be on the right side of Commodore The O’Rahilly and his Glen OD to get the clear message about the DBSC Centenary Party in Sandycove. Photo: W M Nixon
Thus ensuring that DBSC celebrated its Centenary with style was probably much more useful than asserting ancient titles, and Michael O’Rahilly’s sense of the significance of Dublin Bay Sailing Club back in 1984 and the importance of properly marking its Centenary played a key role in increasing the club’s sense of itself, which has carried it through so well that if you were a mathematician of a certain type, you’d be insisting that this year they should be celebrating their 140th year with some added fanfare.
But of course it will be next year when the 140th birthday will be celebrated, and it should be muted enough, as the 150th in ten years time will be something very special, for these days with Rosemary Roy in charge of the engine room through being Honorary Secretary, this potentially unwieldy entity is running like a well-oiled machine.
CLASS AUTONOMY ENCOURAGED
Nowadays the club caters for so many classes that they’re encouraged in their autonomy within the DBSC marquee. But the tradition of encouraging classes generally continues, and it was still at a very hands-on level during the 1930s. Thus the initial germ of the idea of the John B Kearney-designed 17ft Mermaid OD was first aired in 1932 even though it was 1936 before the class was fully in being. But by the late 1940s and through the 1950s, it was one of the most popular club ODs in Ireland.
Dublin Bay Mermaids racing in their annual National Championship in Foynes. Although first conceived in Dun Laoghaire in 1932, the class’s strongest fleets are now to be found elsewhere. Photo: Tony Quinlivan
Then too, while it was at a Committee Meeting of the Royal Alfred Yacht Club in 1934 that the idea of a new 24ft LWL bermudan rigged OD was first aired by Lord Glenavy, owner of the DB21 Garavogue in a class which originated in 1902-03, the fact that in due course the RAYC would eventually be combined into DBSC was anticipated as long ago as 1937, when DBSC took up the idea of the new boat and developed it to become the DB24 class This was and is a versatile classic which was so effective, both inshore and offshore, that in 1963 one of the DB24s was to provide renowned designer Alfred Mylne with his only overall win in an RORC Race.
The restored and re-rigged Dublin Bay 21 Garavogue on her way to a win in Dublin Bay. Photo: Jillly Goodbody
Even more remarkably, Garavogue is still very much in existence, now sailing under the new gunter sloop rig as devised by Hal Sisk and Fionan de Barra in their project to restore the Dublin Bay 21 Class. And we can also see the continuing existence of the Dublin Bay 24s, through the elegant presence of the restored Periwinkle (David Espey & Chris Craig).
The restored Dublin Bay 24 Periwinkle racing off Dun Laoghaire. In 1963 her sister-ship Fenestra (Stephen O’Mara, skippered by Arthur Odbert) was overall winner of the stormy 220-mile RORC Morecambe Bay Race in the Irish Sea. Photo: W M Nixon
This wealth of living history as a normal part of the Dublin Bay sailing scene is to be celebrated with a proposed Grand Parade of Sail on the morning of Sunday July 2nd, going around the East Pier and along the coast of Sandycove to the Forty Foot, for all Dun Laoghaire boats and classes more than fifty years old. With co-ordination and commentary by Hal Sisk in his capacity as Chairman of the International Association of Yachting Historians, it’s an intriguing way of illustrating Dun Laoghaire’s unrivalled sailing history. But by the time that happens, Dublin Bay Sailing Club will already have logged very many races in its crowded 2023 programme.
Former DBSC Commodore Ann Kirwan racing her champion Ruffian 23 Bandit. With their Golden Jubilee being celebrated this year, the Ruffian 23s are eligible to participate in the proposed Grand Parade of Sail at Dun Laoghaire on Sunday July 2nd.
You get the best idea of the scale of it all at the annual prize-giving in November, which is nothing less than a marathon. Silverware is shifted in industrial quantities as further tangible evidence of the very real existence of a virtual club which honours the past, lives in the present, and keenly anticipates the future. Here’s the Afloat.ie report on the successful riders and runners from 2022.
View the 2023 DBSC yearbook on the DBSC website here
