Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

A very successful Flying Fifteen National Championship with 24 boats concluded on Sunday 3rd September in Belfast Lough with a win for the cousins Niall & Ronan O’Briain (4092) from Flying Fifteens Chonamara, after they affected a 10-point swing in…

Saturday, 2nd September, dawned windless on Belfast Lough for the second day of the Irish Flying Fifteen National Championships at County Antrim Yacht Club. It stayed that way sufficiently long for the Race Officer to fly a postponement flag ashore.…

Two races were sailed on Friday at the Flying Fifteen Nationals, hosted by County Antrim Yacht Club on Belfast Lough. Wind that varied from 10 - 15 knots from ENE was the order of the day with a lumpy sea.…

Entries are in from the North, South, East and West for this weekend's Irish Flying Fifteen National Championships, but where will the title rest after the sailing is over? On Wednesday, County Antrim Yacht Club advised that 24 entries have…

Like many sports, sailing has a number of “Holy Grails” that participants in the sport aspire to achieve. Among the more prominent longstanding ones on the international calendar are the Fastnet Race and the Sydney to Hobart Race, and for…

The longstanding commitment of Facet Jewellers to the Flying Fifteen Class in Dun Laoghaire Harbour manifested itself again this past Saturday when the Facet Trophy was raced for by ten Flying Fifteens in a relatively empty Dublin Bay. Indeed, a…

In relative terms, Sunday’s conclusion to the Volvo Dun Laoghaire regatta in the Flying Fifteen class was probably the best day on the water – the wind had abated somewhat, after some initial rain, the sun came out, a single race…

The Flying Fifteens saw a significant increase in their numbers for Day 2 of VLDR 2023, and they were “rewarded” with three races in robust conditions. “Rewarded” is used judiciously as the fleet gathered in the National Yacht Club to…

The Flying Fifteen fleet for the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta boasts a 22-boat entry with two visitors from Dunmore East and all the Flying Fifteen club fleets in Dun Laoghaire represented. The National Yacht Club takes the lion’s share of…

On a day that started with grey skies and torrential rain showers in my part of the world, the latter part of the day presented an evening of sunshine and light winds for a fifteen-boat fleet of Flying Fifteens in…

Seventeen boats contested the Flying Fifteen Westerns in Connemara this past weekend with visitors from Strangford Lough (1), Dunmore East (2) and Dublin Bay (6). Early arrivals on Friday were treated to an evening’s sail on a Galway Hooker and…

With six Dun Laoghaire-based Flying Fifteen crews contesting the Western Championships in Connemara and one other absentee, a turnout of ten boats for the second Saturday of DBSC 2023 wasn’t too bad a head count and those who made the…

The Irish Fireball Class opened their 2023 summer sailing season with a one-day training session and reported here on Afloat, followed by a one-day regatta -The Open Championship, hosted by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club (DMYC), with a programme of…

The last Sunday of the Frostbites, hosted by Dun Laoghaire Motor Yacht Club (DMYC) and sponsored by Viking Marine at Dun Laoghaire Harbour, ended on a high with steady winds out of the north that allowed two races to be sailed…

The Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC dinghy Frostbites at Dun Laoghaire Harbour concludes this Sunday, 26th March. There is a favourable forecast for the afternoon with 15/16 knots from the North, the current projection on XCWeather. As reported after last Sunday's racing,…

The film “Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” dominated the Oscars on the Sunday before the Viking Marine DMYC Dinghy Frostbites second last Frostbite Sunday, and the Frostbite community on Sunday past might have enjoyed an amendment to this film title, along…

After the previous Sunday, March 5th, when the course for the first race was suitable for the second race, without adjustment from the first, Mother Nature gave the Viking Marine DMYC Frostbites Race Officer a more difficult time of it this…

From midweek, the forecast for this past Sunday of Viking Marine DMYC-sponsored Frostbite racing was favourable from a wind perspective – westerlies of the order of 10 – 12 knots but with a cool temperature. However, the latter wasn’t as…

On Sunday past, 26th February, a full quota of races was completed for the Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC dinghy Frostbites with all starts being clean, and some decidedly conservative. The overall fleet size was just under the fifty mark with the…

To use footballing parlance, yesterday’s Viking Marine-sponsored DMYC Frostbite session was “a game of two halves.” In the first half, we had a blustery race with winds building in the lead-up to the first warning signal, up to 17/18 knots,…