Sailing on Saturday with WM Nixon
The international J Boat fleet, with its many variants, fills a special role in world sailing, with an underlying sense of family permeating this attractive no-nonsense craft. For it all of course, stems from the initial creative introduction – explosion,…
Although the announcement that Howth Yacht Club had become the latest MG Motor “Sailing Club of the Year 2023” was made at the beginning of the year following outstanding achievements at home and abroad by the club and its members…
Down Kerry way where the weather is often for adults only, they say that when Noah came bobbing along in his crowded Ark across the boundless wastes of flood water, the first sign of any land-indicating feature with life that…
It was the dog what done it. A hound of mysterious powers has changed family fortunes for a Crosshaven sailing clan. The Murphy-Fegan family’s Grand Soleil 40 Nieulargo, the Royal Cork Yacht Club Vice Admiral’s Cleopatra-style gilded barge, so to…
Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that prediction can be a dodgy business as it involves the future. And when that future is reckoned to include – as it does for today (Saturday’s) Fastnet Race start in the Solent –…
It is arguably the greatest on-water fleet organisation in world sailing. In a week’s time, the 450 or so boats in the 50th staging of the 695-mile Rolex Fastnet Race will be sent on their way from Cowes in a…
Some decidedly rugged racing yesterday (Friday), though with rapidly improving conditions, managed brilliantly to pull the wind-battered VDLR-23 back into line. But there’s no doubting the fact that it is all being achieved with weather that is a little bit…
A week of maritime-related festivity is underway today (Saturday) as Coastival gets going in Dun Laoghaire, with the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta from next Thursday through to Sunday contributing mightily to a peak of dynamic interaction between town entertainment and…
Although Friday’s racing was cancelled in the face of heavy winds and the strong possibility of fog in a notably unstable weather phase, it has otherwise been Camelot in Kinsale for the Simple Blue Sovereigns Cup 2023. Any serious rain…
A hundred years ago next Tuesday, June 20th, Conor O'Brien (1880-1952) of Foynes took his departure with some fanfare aboard his 42ft Saoirse from the harbour her skipper preferred to call Dunleary, though most of its citizens saw it as…
It was that noted offshore yachtsman and rail travel enthusiast Vladimir Ilyich Lenin who observed that ten years can go past with no significant history occurring at all, and then suddenly ten years of hectic history can happen in just…
There’s more than a few of us around who well remember the launching of the new 280 nautical miles Dun Laoghaire to Dingle race by the ideas-filled duo of Martin Crotty and Peter Cullen of the National Yacht Club. It…
This weekend sees ancient gaff-rigged and other craft of multiple vintages gathering at Poolbeg Yacht and Boat Club in Ringsend in the heart of Dublin Port, within sight of some of the most modern ships afloat. It’s the 60th Anniversary…
There’s a remarkable inherited experience of staging regattas in Dun Laoghaire, reinforced by the shared skill in running races of appropriate type and length, which comes through from the unrivalled memory bank of what is and isn’t reasonably possible, passed…
Whatever you may think about the historic gun-running by Erskine & Molly Childers’ Asgard into Howth on July 26th 1914, there’s no denying the fact that this was one of the most significant interactions of sailing as a sport with…
Everyone seems to relish the idea of sailing round Ireland. Indeed, such is our appreciation of it that it all seems to mean different things to different people. To start with, how far is it? Time was when you’d be…