Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

When duty marina manager Robert Munns had a chance meeting with a Danish doctor on a pontoon at Brighton some years ago, it changed his life. Munns had been diagnosed by multiple sclerosis (MS) some time before, and the Dane…

Met Éireann meteorologist Joanna Donnelly recently earned the title of “Optimist of the Year” from an Irish Times letter writer for her take on yet another wet spell. As correspondent Kate Power recalled, Donnelly had been describing a rainfront that…

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…

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…

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…

“It only took 304 years…” The words of Royal Cork Yacht Club’s first female admiral, Annamarie Fegan, on her election to the post this week. As Afloat reports here, Fegan, who already broke new ground in the world’s oldest yacht…

Diver, sailor and coffee distributor David Lawlor is not that mad about oysters – he’ll eat them out of politeness – but he is mad about what they can do as keystone species in stabilising marine habitats. That’s why he…

Let’s do that again, but do it better – they are the words of a very determined Pam Lee from Greystones, who came 29th with Tiphaine Ragueneau in the 30th Transat Jacques Vabre yacht race from Le Havre to Martinique.…

When Tomek Ciezki of Heavy Man Films was asked to meet a man who wanted to make a video of his “holiday and travel photos”, he was initially doubtful. However, the footage took him aback – he was stunned by…

Imagine being on your own on a Blasket island, dependent on several divers to come and collect you – and then their dinghy runs out of fuel. If a fishing vessel hadn’t spotted the reflection of a mirror they had…

It is easier to pump oil from the bottom of the ocean than to farm seaweed, according to French oceans advisor Vincent Doumeizel. Doumeizel, from Burgundy in France, is a senior advisor on the oceans to the United Nations (UN)…

Dublin Port chief executive Barry O’Connell had previously worked in eight different countries for Coca-Cola before he took up his new post a year ago this November. The port has been investing in community projects, including the refurbished substation on…

Pip Hare picked up a magazine one day to read about the BOC challenge, which was the forerunner to the Vendéé Globe. “And all of a sudden, there is Isabelle Autissier, absolutely kicking arse and being written about in the…

How did Dublin’s East Wall get its name, and where did Dublin City once stop and the port begin? These and other interesting questions were answered at last week’s opening of the renovated 18th-century Dublin Port Substation by the Minister…

Tara is a 36-metre French-registered marine research schooner which has an “excellent chef” on board, according to chief scientist Emmanuel Boss. It has been commissioned by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) for the Traversing European Coastlines (TREC) project, which…

During the Second World War, Kerry was the location for a number of both Allied forces and German air crashes, but one less well-known one occurred on the Blasket Island of Inis Mhic Oileáin (Inishvickillaune) on November 25th, 1940. Wreckage…