Things are on the move again. There’s a buzz in the air. W M Nixon anticipates the sailing possibilities for 2016 in a fixtures list so diverse that he reckons that anyone who thinks they know everything that’s going on clearly doesn’t.

If you want anything done, then ask a busy man to do it. And the busier people are ashore, the keener they are to get afloat when they can. There was nothing more sluggish than the sailing and boating scene during the recession years. There was less zest for going sailing when you’d all the time in the world to do it because there was nothing to do ashore. And anyway, as a vehicle sport, sailing was a very identifiable expense which could be reduced or even discarded as the recession rumbled on.

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Anyone with businesses to run knew they’d to keep a very close eye on things all the time if they were to survive at all. Thus we became experts at the short sailing break. The four day regatta became all the rage, and even if the good times roll again as never before, it seems likely the four day regatta is going to stay popular.

It’s indicative of amazingly changed times. Today, it’s beyond imagination to realise that at the height of Scotland’s industrial pomp around Glasgow for eighty years into the 1960s, there used to be a Clyde Fortnight. Two whole weeks of sailing on the trot. Except for Sundays of course, when the church services became yachting events. But even with that spiritual input, it was conspicuous consumption gone mad to be able to show you’d the resources and free time to go off yacht racing for a clear fortnight, knowing your employees – or rather, your inherited company’s employees – would keep those profits and dividends rolling in while you swanned about on the bonnie waters of the Firth.

It took special stamina, too. But times and tastes have changed in any case. There are so many other sports, entertainments and interests vying for our attention these days that sailing has to keep re-inventing itself to make its mark. Yet beneath it all there’s still that elementally simple appeal so eloquently expressed by the folksy Floridian Clark Mills, who in 1947 created the Optimist dinghy:

“A boat, by God, it’s just a gleamin’ beautiful creation. And when you pull the sail up on a boat, you’ve got a little bit of really somethin’ God-given. Man, it goes bleetin’ off like a bird’s wing, you know, and there’s nothin’ else like it”.

It’s still as simple as that. So apart from the usual frostbite races and leagues, it’s more than appropriate that the first major sailing event in Ireland in 2016 is the legendary Optimist Training Week at Baltimore during the half term break in February. Yes folks, February. For sure, we know that in the old Irish calendar, February 1st is St Brigid’s Day, and officially the first day of Spring. But for many sailors, St Patrick’s Day on March 17th is about as early as we want to get. And for most of us, Easter is quite soon enough, thank you.

A harvest of Optys – Optimists racing at the Cork Dinghyfest 2015 in conditions rather different from those they’ll be expecting at Baltimore in February. Photo: Robert Bateman

Nevertheless we salute the keen Opty kids who in February drag their families along with them down to Baltimore – even unto the family dog – in a caravanserai which tells us much about Irish sailing. But what we also know is that Irish sailing is universal, and from times past we’re well aware that our new season is reckoned to start with the Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race on December 26th in the dying days of the old year. So the up-coming dash to Hobart is when our new year begins, and back in December 2012 when Gordon Maguire won it overall - his second overall win in this great Australian annual classic - he was undisputed Afloat.ie “Sailor of the Month” for January 2013.

As we’re on the cruiser-racer theme, we’ll stay with it for now through to the August fixtures, and anyone totally into dinghies and nothing else is invited to scroll down a dozen paragraphs to where we emerge from the world of truck-racing for a consideration of the Olympics, the inshore racing classes, and the dinghies.

But for now staying with cruiser-racers, in recent months Gordon Maguire has been making the Mediterranean scene with success aboard the Mark Mills-designed Max 72 Caol Ila (ex-Alegre), but as the Australian season currently swings back into top gear, he’s in the Matt Allen camp aboard the Carkeek 60 Ichi Ban. However, another Irish line of interest continues with Wicklow-based designer Mark Mills, whose newest 45ft footer Concubine – fresh built in Dubai – is going to an Adelaide owner who will have her at optimum trim for her first big outing in the Hobart race.

Flying machine. The new Mark Mills-designed 45ft Concubine arrives in Australia on November 22nd

Meanwhile, notwithstanding the Optimists gearing up for their February Sailfest in Baltimore, things at home really start on Friday February 4th when the Irish sailing focus closes in on the august yet friendly premises of the Royal College of Surgeons on Stephens Green in the heart of Dublin for the annual ISA/Afloat.ie National Sailing Awards. Sailors of the Month, Sailor of the Year, Mitsubishi Motors Club of the Year and many other well-earned awards will be swept through in a festival of mutual congratulation and camaraderie which perfectly captures the spirit of a sport which has a longer history in Ireland than anywhere else.

Can they do it again? The Royal Cork Yacht Club – with Marine Minister Simon Coveney – at the ISA/Afloat.ie Sailing Awards 2014 ceremony in the RCSI in Dublin on Friday 6th March 2015, when they swept the board and took the Mitsubishi Motors “Club of the Year” award for good measure. The 2015 awards will be presented at the same venue on Friday, February 4th 2016.

University sailing also comes top of the bill in the Springtime, with the Irish championship seeing titleholders UCD defend a position which also saw them representing Ireland at the Student Yachting Worlds in France in October, when they placed third overall. It sounds reasonable enough, but Ireland has won the Worlds a couple of times in the recent past, so there’s work to be done here.

Another area where work is being done is in the growing interest for Under 25 Squads in doing great things with revitalised J/24s. Cillian Dickson of Howth led his Under 25 group to success both in J/24 and open racing in 2015 with the J/24 Kilcullen, and the word is that 2016 will see at least three similar teams making the scene at national and local events.

But for boats with a lid, the top item on the agenda has to be the fact that this is a biennial Commodores’ Cup year, and we’re the defenders. In 2014, thanks to the single-minded determination of Anthony O’Leary, a competitive three boat team was somehow assembled from some very disparate parts, and the title - won in 2010 but undefended in 2012 in the depths of the recession - was re-taken in very positive style after a week of ferocious racing in late July in the Solent.

Ireland nicely placed at the start of the Round the Island Race in the Commodore’s Cup 2014, with two British boats neatly sandwiched between Catapult (red hull) and Antix (silver hull). Catapult is now Antix, while the former Antix has been sold to Sweden.

The RORC Brewin Dolphin Commodore’s Cup 2016 will be raced from Cowes from 23rd to 30th July 2016, and far from having to scrape around to assemble a team, the word is that ICRA may be mounting a two team defence/challenge on our behalf, as the RORC event has seen the rating band lowered to 1,000 to make it attractive to boats like J/109s. These super boats are finally taking off in Ireland as a premier class. It has taken some time, but as we’ve been saying for years, the J/109 might have been designed with the Irish context in mind, and they’re going to be a major part of our sailing for many years to come.

They might have been designed precisely with Irish requirements in mind…….the J/109 class is finally beginning to take off at all main centres.

Through the season, cruiser-racer events swing into action at every level, both at home and nearby abroad, with the RORC Easter Challenge in the Solent (Antix defending for Ireland here), the Silver’s Marine Scottish Series at Tarbert from May 27-30 (Rob McConnell’s A35 Fool’s Gold from Dunmore East is the defender) and then the big home one, the ICRA Nats at Howth from June 10th to 12th, staged just a week after Howth’s at-home major, the Lambay Races on June 4th.

ICRA racing at its best – Liam Burke’s Corby 25 Tribal from Galway making knots at Kinsale in the ICRA Nats 2015. The ICRA Nats 2016 are at Howth from June 10th to 12th. Photo: ICRA

Meanwhile the re-vitalised ISORA programme (defending champion is Shanahan family’s J/109 Ruth from the National YC) will have swung into action in the Irish Sea with a stated commitment to impinge adversely as little as possible – if at all – on long-established events, but for serious old salts the real story in June will be the countdown to the Volvo Round Ireland Race from Wicklow on Saturday June 18th.

Volvo Cars Ireland are in for the long haul on this one. So their first outing with the classic biennial circuit will be run fairly conservatively in the knowledge that legislation is going through the Dail to re-organise the administration of Wicklow Harbour (among other ports). Thus it’s on the cards that in the future, Wicklow Sailing Club and their supportive new sponsor will find they have a harbour much-improved to host visiting boats. But for 2016, the Royal Irish YC in Dun Laoghaire will be providing support berths for larger craft, as too will Greystones Marina in between.

International participation in the biennial Round Ireland Race – Piet Vroon’s famous Ker 46 Tonnere de Breskens making away from the Wicklow starting line on a perect summer’s day. In 2016, Volvo Cars Ireland will be starting a longterm sponsorship of the race.

But even with the current facilities, it’s going to be quite a happening with serious multi-hulls involved for the first time, and Grand Prix racers of the calibre of George David’s Rambler 88 stepping up to the plate, while in the body of the fleet the Shanahan’s Ruth has unfinished business – in 2014 they missed the win by seven minutes to Richard Harris’s Tanit from Scotland.

Until this late-June stage of the season, the south coast will have been fairly quiet in terms of events with an international flavour, but all that changes between 10th and 15th July when the Royal Cork’s Volvo Cork Week swings into action with the added interest (to put it mildly) of the IRC European Championship. This completely new event – a joint venture between the RORC and the RCYC – is still at the developmental stage, but with some far-thinking organisers behind it such as Anthony O’Leary of Royal Cork and Michael Boyd of RORC, it has all the makings of something very special indeed, and will blend in well with July’s expanding European programme as teams work on their performance with the Commodores’ Cup at the end of July providing the Grand Finale.

But of course not everyone seeks the international limelight. There are plenty of local events to keep cruiser-racers busy, and the WIORA Championship 2016 will be from June 29th to July 02nd, hosted by the very venerable Royal Western of Ireland Yacht at Kilrush, which is itself a place re-born since the marina and harbour were taken over by leading harbour engineers L & M Keating.

Inevitably with the August Bank Holiday Monday being precisely on August 1st, traditional events in 2016 will find themselves being compressed into that first week of August, but if you were really keen it might be just be possible to finish the WIORA at Kilrush and then hare round to Schull for Calves Week from Tuesday August 2nd to Friday August 5th, but there are probably too many temptations on the way as you progress along Ireland’s top cruising coast.

However, if you’re not into total relax mode by the time August arrives, then there’s the Olympics in Rio to gather you up in its crazy five ring circus with the sailing events in a continuous tapestry from 5th August 21st August. The Irish challenge for the 2016 Olympiad is still in something of a state of flux as three places have been secured with other possibilities, but the whole thing is total melting-pot stuff, so it’s too early yet to make predictions.

But you don’t have to look to Rio for stellar performance in 2016 as we’ve top level dinghy racing coming to Ireland with the Laser Radial Youth World Championship being hosted in a joint venture by Dun Laoghaire Harbour and the Royal St George YC from Saturday July 23rd to Saturday July 30th, yet another event which has relevance in a different context as the administration of Dun Laoghaire Harbour could well be in a new context in the near future.

Any overview of the dinghy and inshore keelboat scene soon reminds you of the exasperation some observers feel at a global sport which boasts something like 143 recognised World Championships in its annual international programme. And that’s only counting World Championships. Add in Europeans, and numbers increase exponentially, but we have a Europeans in Ireland in 2016 with the Mirrors gathering from 7th to 12th August for racing with one of the most interesting little boats afloat at the RCYC in Crosshaven.

Yet another new boat design. But the new Phil Morrison-designed National 18 has been making a very good impression in Cork Harbour. Photo: Robert Bateman

For their owners, all boats are interesting - that’s the way it is with boats. Indeed, for many participants, it’s not so much the sport as the vehicles themselves which are the raison d’etre of the whole business. And thus we find that in Ireland as elsewhere, traditional, classic and vintage boats are moving ever higher up the agenda with each season’s programme-making.

It could be argued that there’s nowhere better in the world to find such intriguing and individual boats playing an accepted and natural role in the sailing scene than in the Greater Dublin region. 2016 may also be witnessing the centenary of the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution. But despite the turmoil of a hundred years ago, we’re basically a very settled and civilised society, and when we find a boat type we like, we tend to stay with her. And equally as a reasonable society we will happily accept the restrictions of one design racing in order to provide affordable sport.

Thus around Dublin we can find the Water Wags whose class organisation dates back to 1886, even if the boats themselves are the new-fangled version from around 1902 or thereabouts. Equally part of the scene are the Howth 17s, undiluted since 1898. And even boats which we think of as new – such as the International Dragons – are now vintage and some of their best racing in 2016 will be in Glandore where the presiding genius is Don Street and Gypsy, numbering 167 years between them, though it’s rude to ask which way the division falls.

Back to her birthplace. Ian Malcolm’s Howth 17 Aura at Carrickfergus, where she was built by John Hilditch in 1898. Several vintage Hilditch-built boats plan to join the 150th Anniversary celebrations of Carrickfergus Sailing Club and the Royal Ulster yacht Club on Belfast Lough next June. Photo: Damian Cronin

Part of the traditional and classic boat scene in Dublin is the annual Leinster Trophy Race of the Dublin Bay Old Gaffers Association at the June Bank Holiday, and newly-elected DBOGA President denis Aylmer with his Cornish Crabber Mona is defending champion. But this year the classic focus shifts to Belfast Lough at the end of June, as both Carrickfergus Sailing Club and Royal Ulster Yacht Club are celebrating their 150th Anniveraries.

They’ll have many separate events, but as Carrickfergus was also the location of the famous Hilditch boat-building yard where many famous wooden one designs were built between 1892 and 1914, there’ll be a Hilditch Regatta at Carrickfergus morphing into a RUYC Classic Yacht Festival across Belfast Lough at Bangor between Wednesday June 22nd and Monday June 27th, with vintage fleets eligible including Strangford Lough Rivers, the Glens, Howth 17s, Belfast Lough Waverleys, Ballyholme Bays and indeed any classics willing to travel such as Water Wags and vintage Dragons.

Senior Hilditch boat. The Mylne-designed Belfast Lough Island Class yawl Trasnagh, seen here under her new Bermudan rig in 1933, is expected to join the 150th Anniversary celebrations in Belfast Lough in the summer of 2016. Photo courtesy RNIYC

As she was, so she is again. Tern – seen here in 1898 – has been so faithfully restored in 2015 that she even has replicated the inverted 2 for her sail number 7. They couldn’t find a 7 in the sailmakers loft when the boats were being commissioned in a hurry in May 1897. Photo courtesy RUYC

There may even be an appearance by two of the Hilditch daddies of them all, the Fife-designed Belfast Lough Class I 25ft LWL OD Tern of 1897 vintage which has re-emerged in the Mediterranean so effectively restored that she won her class at Les Voiles de St Tropez in September 2015, and the Mylne-designed 39ft LOA Island Class yawl Trasnagh, built in 1913 to join her sisters at Cultra anchorage to make up a fleet of the worlds first true cruiser-racer one designs.

At the other end of the size scale, one of the best new events of 2015 was the Dinghyfest at Royal Cork in August, which was such a success straight out of the box that they’re going to run it again in 2016 on much the same format, and the word is that classes are already queuing to take part in something which could well be a very welcome distraction from Olympic angst.

MAIN 2016 SAILING EVENTS OF IRISH INTEREST 

February 4th ISA/Afloat.ie Annual Awards RCSI, Dublin

May 27th to 30th Silver’s Scottish Series Tarbert, Loch Fyne

June 10th to 12th ICRA Nats Howth

June 18th Volvo Round Ireland Race Wicklow

June 22nd to 27th Belfast Lough Classics Carrickfergus & Bangor

July 10th to 15th Volvo Cork Week & IRC Europeans Royal Cork YC

July 23rd to 30th Laser Youth Radial Worlds RStGYC

July 23rd to 30th Brewin Dolphin Commodore’s Cup Cowes

August 5th to 21st Sailing Olympics 2016 Rio de Janeiro

August 7th to 12th Mirror Europeans Royal Cork YC

October 1st to 2nd All-Ireland Helmsman’s Championship

October Student Yachting World Cup France

October 22nd Rolex Middle Sea Race Malta

2016 ISA FIXTURE LIST

Start	End	Name	Boat Class	Venue
06/02/16	07/02/16	IUSA Westerns	Fireflies	Killaloe SC
25/02/16	28/02/16	IUSA Varsities	Fireflies	Kenmare
26/03/16	27/03/16	Munster Championships	Laser	Baltimore Sailing Club
10/04/16	10/04/16	Traveller 1	Topper	East Down YC
23/04/16	24/04/16	Mirror Westerns	Mirror	Sligo YC
23/04/16	24/04/16	Ulster Championships	Laser	Coounty Antrim Yacht Club
23/04/16	24/04/16	RS400 Easterns	RS	Royal St George YC
23/04/16	24/04/16	RS200 Easterns	RS	Royal St George YC
24/04/16	24/04/16	Traveller 2	Topper	Lough Derg YC
08/05/16	08/05/16	Traveller 3	Topper	Wexford Harbour B&TC
14/05/16	16/05/16	Leinster Optimist Championships	Optimist	Royal St George YC
14/05/16	15/05/16	Optimist Leinsters	Optimist	Royal St George YC
21/05/16	22/05/16	Ulster Championships	Topper	Donaghadee SC
21/05/16	22/05/16	GP14 OT & Purcell	GP14	Swords Sailing & BC
21/05/16	22/05/16	J/24 Northerrns	J/24	Sligo YC
21/05/16	22/05/16	RS400 Northerns	RS	Cushendall Sailing & Boating Club
27/05/16	29/05/16	Sportsboat Cup 2016	Various	Howth YC
27/05/16	29/05/16	Dragon East Coast Championship	Dragon	Royal Irish YC
28/05/16	29/05/16	Squib Northern Championship	Squib	Killyleagh SC
04/06/16	04/06/16	Lambay Races 2016	All Classes	Howth YC
10/06/16	12/06/16	ICRA National Championships 2016	Cruisers	Howth YC
10/06/16	12/06/16	Wayfarer National Championship	Wayfarer	Ramor Watersports Club
11/06/16	12/06/16	Optimist Connaughts	Optimist	Foynes YC
18/06/16		Volvo Round Ireland Yacht Race	Cruisers	Wicklow SC
18/06/16	18/06/16	Royal Alfred Bloomsday Regatta	All Classes	National YC
18/06/16	19/06/16	Leinster Championships	Topper	Skerries SC
25/06/16	26/06/16	GP14 Ulsters	GP14	East Down YC
25/06/16	26/06/16	RS400 Westerns	RS	Sligo YC
25/06/16	26/06/16	RS200 Westerns	RS	Sligo YC
01/07/16	01/07/16	Optimist VP Team Racing Cup	Optimist	Malahide YC
01/07/16	03/07/16	White Sails and Non Spinnaker Team Challenge	Cruisers	Royal St George YC
01/07/16	03/07/16	Dingy West 2016 - Sailing the Wild Atlantic	All Dinghies	Galway Bay Sailing Club
02/07/16	03/07/16	Connaught Championships	Laser	Lough Derg YC
02/07/16	03/07/16	Optimist Ulsters	Optimist	Malahide YC
02/07/16	03/07/16	J/24 Southerns	J/24	Royal Cork YC
02/07/16	03/07/16	Fireball Leinsters	Fireball	Wexford Harbour B&TC
02/07/16	04/07/16	Irish Nationals	Topper	Royal Cork YC
10/07/16	15/07/16	Volvo Cork Week & IRC European Championships	Various	Royal Cork YC
15/07/16	17/07/16	Ruffian 23 National Championship	Ruffian 23	Dun Laoghaire MYC
16/07/16	17/07/16	Optimist Crosbie Cup	Optimist	Lough Ree YC
16/07/16	17/07/16	Leinster Championships	Laser	National YC
17/07/16	17/07/16	Traveller 4	Topper	Carrickfergus SC
22/07/16	24/07/16	Mirror National Championships	Mirror	Sutton Dinghy Club
23/07/16	30/07/16	Laser Radial World Championships (Men's & Youth's)	Laser	Royal St George YC
23/07/16	24/07/16	GP14 Leinsters	GP14	Sutton Dinghy Club
23/07/16	24/07/16	RS400 Southerns	RS	Lough Ree YC
23/07/16	24/07/16	RS200 Southerns	RS	Lough Ree YC
23/07/16	29/07/16	World Championships	Topper	Ballyholme YC
29/06/16	02/07/16	WIORA 2016	Cruisers	Royal Western YC
30/07/16	01/08/16	Arklow Maritime Festival	All Classes	Arklow SC
06/08/16	07/08/16	J/24 Westerns	J/24	Lough Ree YC
07/08/16	07/08/16	Sutton Dinghy Regatta	All Classes	Sutton Dinghy Club
07/08/16	12/08/16	Mirror Europeans 2016	Mirror	Royal Cork YC
09/08/16	11/08/16	420 Nationals	420	Howth YC
12/08/16	13/08/16	Sailability President's Cup	Various	Kinsale YC
12/08/16	14/08/16	Fireball Nationals	Fireball	Howth YC
15/08/16	19/08/16	Optimist Irish Nationals	Optimist	Lough Derg YC
19/08/16	21/08/16	Squib Irish National Championship	Squib	Kinsale YC
20/08/16	23/08/16	National Championships	Laser	Galway Bay Sailing Club
26/08/16	28/08/16	RS400 Irish Nationals	RS	Schull Harbour SC
26/08/16	28/08/16	RS400 Irish Nationals	RS	Schull Harbour SC
27/08/16	29/08/16	GP14 Irish & Masters	GP14	Skerries SC
27/08/16	28/08/16	Munster Championships	Topper	Kinsale YC
27/08/16	28/08/16	Mirror Northerns	Mirror	Royal North Of Ireland YC
27/08/16	28/08/16	Topper Munster Championship	Topper	Kinsale YC
28/08/16	28/08/16	Taste of Greystones Cruiser Regatta	Cruisers	Greystones SC
31/08/16	04/09/16	Dragon Irish Championship	Dragon	Kinsale YC
02/09/16	04/09/16	J/24 Nationals	J/24	Royal St George YC
03/09/16	04/09/16	Wayfarer Inland Championship	Wayfarer	Callaun SC
10/09/16	11/09/16	Optimist Munsters	Optimist	Royal Cork YC
10/09/16	11/09/16	Fireball Munsters	Fireball	Killaloe SC
11/09/16	11/09/16	Traveller 5	Topper	Killyleagh SC
17/09/16	18/09/16	All Ireland Inter-Schools Championship	All Classes	Sutton Dinghy Club
24/09/16	25/09/16	GP14 Autumn & Youth	GP14	Sligo YC
24/09/16	25/09/16	ISA All Ireland Youth Championships	TBC	TBC
01/10/16	02/10/16	ISA All Ireland Senior Championships	J80	TBC
15/10/16	16/10/16	Squib Inland Championship/Freshwater Regatta	Squib	Lough Derg YC

#springafloat – Spring Afloat hits the newsstands with all the latest news and views on the Irish sailing and boating scene. To celebrate the arrival of the Tall Ships to Belfast in July, the German sailing ship Alexander von Humboldt graces Afloat's front cover as plans for a new Irish Tall Ship gather pace. There's pages of news with updates on; the ISA's new Olympic fund; Lifejacket safety issues; Old Gaffers' cruise; Belfast launches Tall Ships; National sailing league, anyone?; Anthony O'Leary & Commodore's Cup Team take 'Sailor of the Year' accolade; Ilen uniting community; Council wants DL control; New Baltimore pontoon; Greystones club houses; Stena leaves Dun Laoghaire and lots lots more

Scroll down for more details of the content inside this issue. Buy your copy now!

Maritime web awards

Who's making waves online?

Visit Derry

Sail Ireland's North West and discover Donegal's rugged coastline

A Tall Ship for Ireland

The Tall Ships return to Ireland in style this summer with a major fleet assembly in Belfast.

Racing Round–up Autumn league

A brand new dinghy week, a decision to modernise the Squib, UCC success in Schull plus moves to re–ignite dinghy sailing on the capital's waters

Astrid - The Mayday Call

Sailor John Leahy tells how he alerted the rescue services

Inland Waters 

Ulster canal restoration underway

Brokerage

The latest boats and equipment in Ireland's marine marketplace

Classifieds

A selection of Afloat.ie's online classified adverts

Dubarry Nautical Crossword

A nautical crossword with a great boating prize of Dubarry deck shoes

Soundings

An assembly worthy of Rembrandt at the Royal College of Surgeons

#soy – Yesterday's Afloat.ie/Irish Sailing Association annual sailing awards ceremony saw a remarkable gathering of talented boat people and their supporters and friends at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland in Dublin to honour the Best of the Best in company with Minster for the Marine Simon Coveney. The Sailor of the Year title went to Anthony O'Leary of Cork and our all-conquering Commodore's Cup team, while the Youth Sailor of the Year is Laser Gold Medallist Finn Lynch of County Carlow, who currently sails from the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, but started his stellar sailing career with the lakeside Blessington Sailing Club up in the Wicklow Hills.

In addition, Mayo Sailing Club was chosen from upwards of 80 training centres – both clubs and commercial ventures – as the Training Centre of the Year, while the venerable Royal Cork Yacht Club, currently led by Admiral Pat Lyons, assumes the mantle of ISA/Mitsubishi Motors Sailing Club of the Year 2015 in continuation of an informal pioneering inter-club contest - dating back to 1979 - which will resume its long-established tradition of a proper handover ceremony for the coveted ship's wheel trophy in the winner's Crosshaven clubhouse as the new season gets fully under way.

Meanwhile, Afloat's W M Nixon performed as MC in yesterday's ceremony, and in doing so he was assisted by the discovery that the venue had unexpected historic links with some of the great figures in Irish sailing history, as he now explains.

The fine building of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland adds a bit of real class to the west side of St Stephen's Green, and it's almost exactly at the point which most of us think of as the absolute centre of Dublin, the very heart of the city where Grafton Street winds away from the Green's northwest corner.

Yesterday afternoon it became the heart of Irish sailing too, and we struck purest gold after reflecting that the only President of the RCSI of whom we had any knowledge of a strong sailing connection was Sir Thomas Myles.

Thomas Myles (1857-1937) was one of those larger-than-life characters who completely upset our perceptions of the Victorians as self-effacing and quiet people of an overly religious disposition. A Limerick Protestant who wore his faith lightly, he was a Home Rule supporter from an early age, and while studying medicine at Trinity College in Dublin he became a university boxing champion of such continuing power that at the age of thirty he went three rounds with the legendary prize fighter John L Sullivan.

Sailing was among his many sports, and as his reputation and income grew with his success as a surgeon, so too did the size of the yachts which he sailed from the Royal Irish Yacht Club on Dublin Bay. By the 1890s he was one of the most eminent surgeons in the city, and in a contest at the turn of the century he stood as firm favourite for the election to be the President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland for the period 1900 to 1902.

Thomas Myles around the time he was President of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland

But his opponent, one Dr Henry FitzGibbon, refused to accept the situation on the grounds that Myles' public involvement with the United Irish League would bring disrepute upon the college, and he went to court to argue his case that Myles shouldn't be allowed to stand for election in the first place .

Now it so happened that another keen sailing man, Walter Boyd of Howth (his son was to design the Howth 17s), was the judge who heard the case. Boyd is best known for his twelve years as a bankruptcy judge which resulted in the phrase "breaking Boyd's heart" becoming Dublinese to describe profligacy as referenced in Joyce's Ulysses. But in 1897 he had returned to more general cases, thus it was Boyd who heard the FitzGibbon/Myles case, and he threw out the plaintiff's arguments with such vigour that FitzGibbon was obliged to publish apologies and withdraw his candidature.

So when Thomas Myles became the president of the RCSI in 1900, it was an elevation which received much more than the usual attention around town. And in a style typical of the man, he set in motion the process whereby the College started to build itself the Grand Banqueting and Examination Hall, which is where the great and the good of Irish sailing were assembled yesterday.

The impressive new hall wasn't fully finished until 1904, but by that time its instigator had become Sir Thomas Myles Bt, as was the custom with retiring Presidents of the RCSI. Having seen the new building works under way, his retirement from office - though not from working as a surgeon - meant he'd more time on his hands, so he bought himself a great big ketch, the 121-ton Dorothy, which he cruised on the coasts of Europe.

But by 1910 or perhaps even earlier, he had downsized to the more workmanlike and manageable 60ft Chotah, which had been built in Brixham in Devon in the 1890s and was apparently not unlike a Brixham trawler, for the ever busy Wally McGuirk of Howth has discovered that she ended her days as an Arklow fishing boat.

The reason Wally and others are so interested in Chotah is that she is the missing link in the 1914 Howth and Kilcoole gun-runnings. We know all about the "flagship" of that event, Erskine and Molly Childers' Asgard, we know too about Conor O'Brien's ancient ketch Kelpie and have photos of her as well, and we even know a little bit about the Nugget, the McLaughlin family's boat which was the first fishing boat in Howth to be fitted with an engine.

But of the Chotah we know very little at the moment, but hope that the newfound Arklow connection will discover a photo. What is known is that when the gun-running committee sought to find a suitable vessel with auxiliary power to take over the cargo of 600 guns from Conor O'Brien's engineless Kelpie in order to land them on the beach at Kilcoole in County Wicklow, that pillar of society Sir Thomas Myles willingly agreed to bring Chotah in on the action. He and his crew took aboard the guns off St Tudwal's Island just south of Abersoch on the Welsh coast, and brought them across Channel to land at Kilcoole a few days after Asgard had made her much more high profile landing at Howth.

If you find all this insurgency activity by significant figures in Irish society a bit bewildering to comprehend in all its complexity, you ain't heard nothing yet. The Great War broke out just a few days later, and in a general mobilization Sir Thomas Myles Bt was soon appointed to being a Lieutenant Colonel in the British Army in order that he could head up a large Royal Army Medical Corps medical and surgery unit in his hospitals and in the field.

Then in November 1914 – barely three months after he had been personally involved in smuggling guns into Ireland while evading the surveillance of His Majesty's Armed Services – Sir Thomas Myles was appointed Honorary Surgeon to King George V. Yet it's said that when the 1916 Easter Rising took place, he readily found the facilities to treat any wounded rebels, and even managed to hide those on the run in the rabbit warrens of hundreds of rooms which were to be found in the great Dublin hospitals under his supervision.

Pillar of society. Sir Thomas Myles sailing with family and friends aboard his cutter Faith in the 1920s. Photo courtesy RIYC

So if you happened to notice me looking around in some wonderment at the stately and ordered design of the Banquetting Hall in the Royal College of Surgeons yesterday afternoon while I reflected on the man who had caused this very fine room and the handsome edifice about it to be built, now maybe you'll understand why. Yet such is the complexity of Irish sailing in its myriad of forms that it's arguably all of a piece with the extraordinary lifepath of people like Sir Thomas Myles, and the ISA President's speech captured some of the problems people face in trying to administer this weird sport of ours.

The new Sailor of the Year Anthony O'Leary wasn't present for the awards as he is currently in the midst of a long-planned sailing campaign in Florida. But for the actual handover, his place was well taken by his son Robert and RORC Commodore Michael Boyd, who was co-skipper of Quokka in the successful Commodore's Cup team.

Things could have become completely surreal as the President himself, David Lovergove, wasn't at the event as his flight home from America the day before had been cancelled because of exceptionally heavy snowfalls on the US East Coast. But ISA Board Member David O'Brien of Cork of gallantly stepped up to the plate to fulfill the Presidential role, and made a fine job of delivering a speech which well encapsulates what the day was all about:

"Flag Officers, distinguished guests and fellow sailors, you are all very welcome here this afternoon. In looking out over this friendly assembly - some of whom I know very well, many of whom I know quite well, and some of whom I don't know at all but am looking forward very much to meeting – it is clearly obvious that the sailing and boating community in Ireland is one of enormous diversity.

In fact, in thinking of the sheer range and varying levels of activities afloat which we in the ISA try to represent, I am reminded of President de Gaulle's exasperated comment about the difficulties inherent in trying to govern France: "How can you administer a country" demanded the frustrated General "which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?"

Our fellow members of the Irish sailing and boating community may well think that we on the Board of the Irish Sailing Association tend to see ourselves as the big cheeses among the many varieties. Believe me, nothing could be further from the truth. Like yourselves, we could be described as the small artisan cheeses of sailing, with a strong local flavour. But it happens that it has fallen to us on the Board at this time, to undertake the task of re-shaping the Irish Sailing Association as it emerges rather bruised from the economic recession, and we need your help.

So I would ask you to be sympathetic to us in the administration of the Irish Sailing Association as we work to re-form our structures and implement our new Strategic Plan 2015-2020. It has been most encouraging the way that the Public Consultation Meetings in Dun Laoghaire, Cork and Galway in recent weeks have been so well attended, and from them we have gained very useful insights to work with you towards a productive, worthwhile and groundbreaking ISA Annual General Meeting on March 28th.

But that's another day's work. This afternoon, we are here for a celebration to honour Irish sailing and its many successes both individually and in team efforts through 2014. This function began as a thought in my mind when, during last summer, we were getting reports of fantastic results being achieved by Irish sailors and I felt that we, as the Board of the ISA, should recognize these achievements in some way. A reception was considered, then as Summer progressed and incredible achievements continued to roll in, I realized that such receptions would almost need to be held on a weekly basis.

So it was decided to wait until year end and combine the celebration of Irish sailing achievements with the presenting of the awards. Yet even that is a cause of concern. You see, in looking over the extraordinary listings for 2014, for the life of me I don't see how 2015 can even begin to match it. But as with 2014, doubtless this year will also produce some very welcome good news stories, and we look forward to the new season very much indeed, with the confidence that Ireland will continue to punch well above its weight in the world of sailing.

The structure of this afternoon's awards ceremony will help you to form a comprehensive picture of the entire Irish sailing and boating scene. Most appropriately, we will begin with the award for the ISA Training Centre of the Year, which we reckon to have been the best in 2014 from a lineup which includes an impressive 80 training facilities, run both in clubs, and as commercial ventures.

It's also worth noting that there are now 24 secondary schools in Ireland, which include sailing as a sports option in their curriculum. A while ago, I visited Schull Sailing School and was bowled over by the fact that the children in the local school select sailing as their sport of first choice, ahead of rugby, soccer, Gaelic football, hurling, hockey etc. Now that is some achievement. This is clearly a step in the right direction, and it leads us to the next part of our ceremony, the award for the ISA Youth Sailor of the Year.

Having laid the foundations, so to speak, we then move on to the announcement of the ISA/Mitsubishi Motors "Sailing Club of the Year" award. The demographics and population spread of Ireland are such that our sailing clubs play the key role in most of our sailing development, and as we had the world's first sailing club in 1720, our clubs are literally world class.

We not only invented sailing clubs, but back in 1979 we became the first sailing country in the world to have an informal "Club of the Year" competition. Since 1986, it has been sponsored by our very good friends of Irish sailing at Mitsubishi Motors.

We feel that today's national gathering is the appropriate time to announce the winner, which will be known as the Sailing Club of the Year 2015. But in time-honoured tradition, as the new season gathers pace, there will be another ceremony in the winning clubhouse for the full and final handover of the historic ship's wheel trophy, when the members can share in the successes obtained by their top competitors and administrators.

With this framework of Irish sailing clearly in place, we then conclude with the peak of achievement, the ISA/Afloat "Sailor of the Year 2014". Afloat's ownership of this award – based on Sailor of the Month winners - has a long history, going back to 1996, and it successfully highlights achievement in every area of sailing.

One month, you might get an exceptional voyage honoured, while the next month it might be a major international dinghy championship victory. The diversity is total. And just occasionally, to emphasise that we are a community, which functions afloat and ashore, the monthly award might go to someone who has given selflessly of their time for sailing administration.

The overall national award will be presented to the person who, in the judges' opinion, achieved the most notable results in, or made the most significant contribution to Irish sailing during 2014.

The boating public has had a chance to nominate their top three through an online poll, Afloat.ie got a vote too and the Sailor of the Year judges have decided the final winner.

I cannot conclude without acknowledging our sponsors. In addition to those mentioned here today – Dublin Port, Parasol and Mitsubishi Motors - I also want to thank Providence Resources for their contribution to the high performance squad. However, it is the incredible support that we receive from the Irish Sports Council that allows us to function and without whose support we would not have nearly as much to celebrate today as we have. Year after year the Sports Council continues to support sailing and behalf of Irish sailors, I thank you most sincerely".

The men who raced the open ocean. At the reception in the RCSI were (left to right) Dickie Gomes (Sailor of the Month for May 2014), Caroline Coyne, and her husband Liam Coyne (Sailor of the Month for August 2014). Both Dickie and Liam have sailed short-handed Round Britain and Ireland Races with success, the former in 1982 and the latter in 2014. Liam Coyne topped the Afloat.ie online poll for 2014. Photo: W M Nixon

Josephine Keller, Aisling Keller, Ann Carroll, Nicole Hemeryck and Oisine Hemeryck 

Conor Quinn and Adam D'Arcy

Pat O'Neill and Charles Seargent

Matt McGovern, Ryan Seaton and Saskia Tidey

 Charles Sargent, Brian Craig and Paddy O'Neill

Jack Roy, David Vinnell, and Ron Hutchieson

John D'Arcy, Kate D'Arcy, Imelda D'Arcy and Adam D'Arcy

Hal Bleakley and Padraic O Brolchain

Ian Dickson, Andy Johnston, Jim Lampkin  and Jane Johnston

Isabella Morehead, Claire Burke and Muireann Guifoyle

Tony O'Driscoll and David Metcalfe

Sandra Wynne and Edwin Fay

Brian Craig and Kieran Mulvey, Chairman, Irish Sports Council

#sailoroftheyear – The voting is over, the judges have decided and today the 2014 ISA/Afloat.ie Sailor of the Year will be revealed at a Dublin city centre ceremony. 

Over 200 invitees are gathering this afternoon to celebrate some remarkable achievements from the 2014 sailing season.

Afloat's ownership of this award – based on Sailor of the Month winners - has a long history, going back to 1996, and it successfully highlights achievement in every area of sailing.

For example, one month there may be an exceptional voyage honoured, while the next month it might be a major international dinghy championship victory. The diversity is total. And just occasionally, to emphasise that we are a community, which functions afloat and ashore, the monthly award might go to someone who has given selflessly of their time for sailing administration.

A full list of the 2014 achievements is HERE.

The overall national award will be presented to the person who, in the judges' opinion, achieved the most notable results in, or made the most significant contribution to Irish sailing during 2014.

The boating public has had a chance to nominate their top three through an online poll, Afloat.ie got a vote too and the Sailor of the Year judges have decided the final winner.

The winner will be announced this afternoon on Afloat.ie and WM Nixon will review today's awards celebration in his 'Sailing on Saturday' blog tomorrow morning.

#soy – The new stars of the Irish sailing firmament are Anthony O'Leary (57) of Cork and the successful Commodore's Cup team. In a gala ceremony in Dublin this afternoon to celebrate the many achievements of our sailors in 2014, O'Leary and his team mates were applauded as the crème de a crème, reflecting his own insistence throughout the exemplary Commodore's campaign that it was only by a close-knit group effort that success could be obtained.

The sharing of the award - presented in a crowded gathering of Ireland's diverse sailing community in the Royal College of Surgeons by Minister for the Marine Simon Coveney on behalf of the Irish Sailing Association and Afloat.ie - proved to be doubly appropriate, as O'Leary himself could not be present owing to a longterm commitment to a week-long sailing campaign currently under way in Florida.

However, his son Rob – a former Sailor of the Month himself - accepted the Afloat.ie Sailor of the Month award for June 2014 on his father's behalf. That award was to celebrate Anthony O'Leary's success in being the overall winner of the British Open IRC Championship.

But after that, his personal achievements continued at a high level throughout the season, as he became the Helmsmans Champion 2014 early in September racing with the J/80s in Howth, and then later that same month he won through to be the 1720 National Champion racing in Baltimore.

Anthony O'Leary (right) and his crew Dylan Gannon (left) and Dan O'Grady celebrate All Ireland victory off Howth in the Helmsmans Champs. Photo: Jonathan Wormald

That this all occurred within weeks of his brilliant leading of the Commodore's Cup team during the last week of July gives some indication of the enormous contribution made by Anthony O'Leary to Irish sailing during 2014.

1720 National Champions – Anthony O'Leary's Antix crew in winning form again off Baltimore. Photo: Aedan Coffey

 

But as the Commodore's Cup win also saw the Afloat.ie International Award for July being made to the entire team, the Sailor of the Year 2014 was jointly presented to Rob O'Leary standing in for his father, and to Michael Boyd, recently elected Commodore of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, who was one of the Irish skippers in the superb Commodore's Cup team.

It is the second time the Crosshaven skipper has won the Irish Sailor of the Year title, he lifted it first in 2010.

#sailoroftheyear – That final decision on the ISA/Afloat.ie Sailor of the Year 2014 award will be announced at the Sailing Awards celebration in Dublin on the afternoon of Friday March 6th March at a ceremony which will also see each Sailor of the Month individually honoured, the ISA Youth Sailor of the Year awarded, the ISA Training Centre of the Year honoured, and the ISA/Mitsubishi Motors Sailing Club of the Year for 2015 announced.

The boating public and maritime community have been voting in very large numbers to help guide the judges in deciding who should be crowned Ireland's Sailor of the Year for 2014. According to our online poll, some popular front-runners have emerged with significant and often rapidly-varying levels of support. The judges welcome this huge level of public interest in helping them make their decision, but firmly retain their right to make the ultimate decision for the final choice while taking voting trends into account.

In considering those voting trends, we are aware that some over-enthusiastic supporters may feel that they are helping their favoured sailor's prospects by exploiting the system. Please be assured that support of this kind can be negative in its ultimate effect. But equally, the judges will be able to make allowance for any artificial support in order that a deserving sailor's prospects are not impaired by it as they reach their final decision.

The national award is especially designed to salute the achievements of Ireland's sailing's elite. Over nearly two decades the awards has developed in to a premier awards ceremony for water sports.

As in previous years, the overall national award will be presented to the person who, in the judges' opinion, achieved the most notable results in, or made the most significant contribution to, Irish sailing during 2014.

CLICK HERE TO READ EACH ACHIEVEMENT AND TO VOTE FOR YOUR SAILOR AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE.

Created in 1996, the Afloat Sailor of the Year Awards represent all that is praiseworthy, innovative and groundbreaking in the Irish sailing scene.

Since it began 19 years ago the awards have recognised over 300 monthly award winners in the pages of Ireland's sailing magazine Afloat and these have been made to both amateur and professional sailors. The first ever sailor of the year was Dinghy sailor Mark Lyttle, a race winner at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.

The judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. 

#fullirish – It's not hard to argue that 2013 was the biggest year by far in David Kenefick's sailing career. And that he's still only 22 years of age makes his solo sailing achievements over the last 12 months even more remarkable.

Indeed, his performance in the demanding Figaro Solo alone was surely enough to secure his place in our esteem - and garner him Afloat's Irish Sailor of the Year Award for 2013.

Kenefick's prodigious talent backed his claim to the Rookie of the Year title (never before awarded to a non-French skipper) as the youngest in the field running a gruelling Gallic gauntlet of almost 7,000 offshore miles, nearly all of them single-handed.

His year of success began in February - just three months after launching his Figaro bid - when he raced his Figaro one-design yacht for the first time in the 140 nautical miles of La Grande Motte.

Finishing second out of six finishers, the result put Kenefick in good stead for the following month's ICOM Cup Méditeranée in Marseille, where fifth place in the final leg saw him tally 11th overall - one step closer to achieving his long-held ambition.

But qualification for La Solitaire du Figaro was only sealed in April's 320-mile Solo Arrimer race, the longest he'd sailed till that date. And he bettered that rookie podium finish with 15th in May's 30-boat Solo Concarneau, in which he was the second newcomer over the line.

"I now know a lot more about what this kind of racing is," Kenefick told Afloat after that third race, underlining the mental strength that long-distance solo sailing demands.

"It is about training your mind. Your eyes will close but your mind is still going... You have to go there to understand it. It's weird waking up when you are at the helm. It's quite amazing what your body and mind can do."

That invaluable race experience aside, Kenefick also benefitted from the guiding hand of coach and mentor Marcus Hutchinson, himself a Figaro veteran, who put the young Crosshaven sailor through his paces.

Still, it's one thing to prepare and another to actually do it: the Figaro Solo is a unique challenge, the 535 miles of its first leg enough to ward off the weak.

So it was disheartening, though not surprising, to see Kenefick make a poor start off the line from Bordeaux on 2 June, stuck among the backmarkers as the fleet headed up the Gironde Estuary.

Around him strong contenders fell by the wayside in this race of attrition. And Kenefick himself would not emerge unscathed, a "little collision" taking a chunk out of the keel of his yacht 'Full Irish'.

Ultimately, though, it was just a scratch - a battle scar to prove Kenefick's mettle as he completed the first leg in 33rd place out of 41 starters.

But he knew he could do better, rueing the mistake of not sleeping when he had the chance and winding up lost in a tangle of fishing boats.

Light winds saw leg two shortened to 300 nautical miles from Porto to the Spanish port of Gijon - the last 45 of which, as Hutchinson wrote in his Figaro blog, proved the most important.

Sailing much smarter now, Kenefick was in the middle group, best positioned to act upon the telltale signs of stalling winds ahead, and at one point made it to the top 10.

His 18th place finish was a huge boost to his confidence and his chances going into the penultimate leg from Gijon to Roscoff, starting with straight 200-mile run across the Bay of Biscay considered the hardest leg of the course, where barometric pressure trends matter more than tidal charts.

Kenefick suffered on the wrong side of the fleet, putting him far down the rankings to the point where strategy goes out the window and all that matters is staying awake and getting as much speed as possible. But he wasn't the only one, and still reached Roscoff third among the rookies.

After four days of much-needed shore leave, the fleet embarked on the final leg to Dieppe: 520 miles via the south coast of England, an unforgiving route tracing rocky coastlines and tidal gates that demands physical toughness and nerves of steel.

Surviving a scary night-time game of rock dodgems, Kenefick hoisted early and drove hard through the night from Wolf Rock to Needles Fairway, gaining 11 places on the way - though a violent gybe towards the end loosened his mainsail and left him scrambling to improvise a fix.

However, it failed to put a damper on an "amazing" leg for Kenefick, who crossed the line in the small hours of 23 June with a cumulative placing of 28th out of 40 finishers, third among the rookies - and becoming only the fourth Irishman to complete the race after Damian Foxall, Paul O'Riain and mentor Hutchinson.

"If you had said to me last year that I'd be at the finish of the Solitaire," he said, "I don't think I would have believed you."

What an achievement - and yet that wasn't the end of Kenefick's offshore season, as he followed with a strong showing in September's Tour de Bretagne ala Voile, and an even more impressive display in the Generali Solo around the Mediterranean, where he finished 12th as the best rookie in the fleet.

That was enough to clinch the title of 2013's best Figaro newcomer for the young Corkman, who we also recognised as our Sailor of the Month for October.

"No one comes into this scene and performs at the top in their first year," he said as the weight of his achievements began to sink in.

But he did it, and so it was only right that we honour David Kenefick with the Sailor of the Year Award for doing what was previously thought impossible.

For full coverage of David Kenefick's 2013 season click here.

#sailoroftheyear – W M Nixon reviews the lineup for the Afloat.ie Sailor of the Year 2013 for which voting concludes on February 17th, but only after he has considered some oddities and omissions in the annual circus of local, regional, national and global personal sailing awards. And he makes an important point about the history of Irish sailing awards.

It's a curiosity that in the slew of local, regional, national and international individual sailing awards which have been making it across the finish line as 2013 draws to a close and 2014 washes over us, none seem to have been made to anyone who was sailing in the America's Cup.

Maybe the Cup itself is seen as enough award for anyone. We've said it before, but we'll say it again: The America's Cup is the peak of sailing – alas. Yet this global distribution of gongs to anything and everything except the America's Cup tends to suggest that AC people are seen as functioning in some sort of parallel universe. Or maybe it's a compression chamber. Whatever it is, when a sailor goes into this rarefied zone, he ceases to be seen as a being to whom ordinary matelots can relate in any meaningful way.

The fact that AC crews are de-humanised by being kitted out in black crash helmets and the blackest of black uniforms, and sail on boats to which normal boaty terms scarcely apply (you can't really call it a "she" when it's called a platform in the first place), is all part of the oddity with its alien nature.

And when people are in this extreme world, they have attitudes and speak in ways which are at variance with their approach when they're in another sailing environment. But happily, the good news is that when they emerge from the AC hothouse back into the real world, they soon become as soppy and sentimental as the rest of us.

One of the toughest cookies of all when he's in America's Cup mode is Australia's Iain Murray. It has recently been confirmed that he's moved his focus back home to head up Bob Oatley's Hamilton Island YC America's Cup Challenge, a ferociously demanding role as HIYC are the Challengers of Record for the 35th series.

Thus Murray will have to be up to speed with, and indeed faster than m'learned friends as the legal negotiations get up a head of steam. All that and sailing too. Yet when he's outside the AC bubble, he seems to have attitudes to boats and sailing with which any of us can identify.

One of the joys as 2013 drew to a close was watching the unfolding drama of the Sydney-Hobart Race. There were all sorts of exiting new or totally re-vamped boats, for Australia has been by-passed by the global recession. But the popular money was on Bob Oatley's veteran hundred footer Wild Oats IX, a skinny and much-modified yoke which has had more face-lifts than an ageing Holywood star.

But unlike your Holywood star, the more mods she gets, the more people seem to like the gallant Wild Oats. And among those who frequently sail the big events on her – and whose tactical skill was seen at the start of the Hobart Race in Sydney harbour when Wild Oats carried the much-fancied Perpetual LOYAL (ex Rambler 100) above the crucial break line for the first turning buoy - was Iain Murray. After the race was over and Wild Oats had done the business for line honours yet again, Murray gave his heartfelt thoughts:

"Wild Oats is a bit of an old girl now" he said. "For her to stand up and deliver is special really. This boat and the crew have been around a long time and to keep the boat improving is a nice thing to do.

"I'm sure if you started with a clean sheet of paper now, you wouldn't build this boat, but she's a good all-round boat. She isn't great down-wind or a record breaker or a reaching boat; she is a good all-round boat and coupled with that she has a great, consistent crew that generally gets the most out of her.

"I think everyone in the crew was on their game this year. In the nine (Sydney-Hobart) races this boat has done, this was by far the best".

Read that out in sonorous tones with a lone violin in the background, and there wouldn't be a dry eye in the house. It's about as far from the coldly clinical approach that is essential to the modern America's Cup as it's possible to be, and the word is that Bob Oatley is himself nominated for a sailor's award on the strength of his commitment to the old Wild Oats and the Hobart Race, not for his growing involvement with the America's Cup.

The skinny weird thing which is Wild Oats XI. "If you started with a clean sheet of paper now, you wouldn't build this boat, but she's a good all-round boat".

But while the America's Cup may be enough award in itself, in the bigger picture the variety is such that Sailor of the Month and Sailor of the Year awards are helpful in sensing what's going on, and keeping a record of what has been happening. However, you can soon have enough of a good thing, and too much very quickly. So here at Afloat.ie we're more than somewhat bemused by this week's announcement by the Irish Sailing Association of its up-coming Sailor of the Year award.

There are times admittedly when the ISA do things that make you think they're on another planet. So if they do something that suggests they're in another country, then maybe it's really no big deal. And perhaps we should gracefully accept that this sudden transformation of their Sailing Achievement Award of a year ago into a full-blown Sailor of the Year award this week is a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

Whatever, out of respect for the 336 Afloat "Sailors of the Month" and 28 Afloat "Sailors of the Year" who have enhanced our sport since we inaugurated these awards back in 1996, we feel that due acknowledgement of their achievements, plus the facts of history, and the current situation in Irish sailing, means that we should at least stake our claim as prior users of the Irish Sailor of the Year title.

Enough said. Voting on the latest annual batch closes at 6.0pm on Monday February 17th. We're delighted with the response there has been right across the board, even if it hasn't been on the scale of the good old days before one-vote-per-voter electronic limitation was imposed, when one determined skipper voted for himself 3,000 times at the mad height of the Celtic Tiger years. We know who he was, and where he lives......

The lineup reflects the diversity of our sport. As recent online arguments about the reinstatement of the Star in the Olympics have emphasised, the majority of us sail in boats with keels, while beyond that there's a very large number of us who seldom if ever race, yet we love our boats and sailing. However, racing creates its own narrative, so inevitably the racing names push their way to the fore afloat and ashore.

JANUARY
GORDON MAGUIRE

In the first week of January 2013, ex-Pat Gordon Maguire celebrated 53 straight weeks of exceptional achievement in Australian sailing. The 63ft Reichel Pugh sloop Loki, aboard which he was sailing master, was confirmed as overall champion in the Australian Blue Water Points Score, which is based on a season-long seven race series with no discard, concluding with the 628-mile Sydney-Hobart.

While defending champion Loki may have had to concede the overall Hobart Race handicap win at the end of December 2012 to line honours winner Wild Oats XI, she was a very solid second to augment her overall victory a year earlier. As for conceding that one win to Wild Oats, it was the only time throughout the 2012-13 season that Loki had done so, and in the second-longest race of the series, the 384-mile Sydney-Gold Coast Race, Loki had been in top form for a convincing overall win.

Gordon Maguire's four years of growing success with a mixed amateur-professional crew aboard Stephen Ainsworth's Loki spoke volumes for his exceptional talents as a helmsman, his inspiring ability as a leader, and his high qualities as a team member. Added to his record as a champion round the world racer and a winner in many other events, this peak of achievement in January 2013 marked the latest chapter in a remarkable success story for Irish sailing.

FEBRUARY
SIMON & NANCY DE PIETRO

Simon and Nancy de Pietro of Kinsale Yacht Club were the Afloat.ie Sailors of the Month for February after their convincing win in Class 1 in the RORC Caribbean 600 Race. With strong family links to North Cork and Sligo, they fly the burgee of the popular club on the south coast of Ireland for their successful international sailing programme.

Lilla, Class 1 winner in the RORC Caribbbean 600 2013

Although their 76ft Philippe Briand-designed Lilla is a much-loved 20-year-old veteran, the high standard of maintenance which is lavished by this enthusiastic sailing couple on their hard-working charter boat shows itself in the consistency of the boat's racing performance in a competitive programme which is fitted around a regular working life on the Caribbean cruise circuit.

The quiet season in the Caribbean is in the summer, and last year saw Lilla avail of summer's opportunity to come north in June and race in the famous biennial Newport-Bermuda Race, which was first sailed in 2006. With Simon as skipper and Nancy as navigator, they won overall in the cruising division. Lilla clearly likes racing to Bermuda, as she has also won overall in another contest to the "onion patch", the annual race from Marion in Massachusetts.

For the start of 2013, Lilla's charter programme was put on hold for a while as she geared up for the new sunshine classic, the RORC Caribbean 600. Although she has relatively shallow draft in order to maximize her cruising choices, she is raced so skillfully that the expected limitations on her windward performance simply don't seem to materialize.

MARCH
FERGUS & KAY QUINLAN

Fergus and Kay Quinlan's three year voyage around the world in their own-built 12m steel cutter Pylades was an inspiration to Ireland's sailing community. And it received international acclamation from the premier global voyaging organisation, the Ocean Cruising Club, which gave the County Clare couple – who sail from Kinvara on Galway Bay – the special OCC Award for those "who have done most to foster and encourage ocean cruising in small craft and the practice of seamanship and navigation in all branches".

Living the dream. Fergus & Kay Quinlan's Pylades resting in Fiji. Photo: Fergus Quinlan

The magical cruise of the Pylades had already been awarded the Irish Cruising Club's senior trophy, the Faulkner Cup (which dates from 1931), for an unprecedented three years in a row. And for the many in Ireland who had been following the cruise, it came as no surprise that the experienced adjudicators in the Ocean Cr C also found the cruise of the Quinlans to be both an informative entertainment, and a realistic encouragement to those who would hope to do something similar.

APRIL
ROBERT O'LEARY
The O'Learys of Crosshaven have taken the Sailor of the Month title several times over the years with the remarkable achievements of father Anthony, and sons Peter and Nicholas. But the Spring of 2013 clearly demonstrated that there's a new O'Leary on the stage - younger brother Robert, who played a key role in Irish university sailing through March and April.

Previously in the baby brother position as the successful skipper of the family's "cruiserfied" 1720 Antix Beg, young O'Leary made the scene in that hotbed of college development, the University of Limerick. This admired institution's success does more to change public perceptions of the sometimes troubled Shannonside city than a whole raft of government inner city initiatives. But even so, when UL came into being in 1989, it would have aroused incredulity to suggest that, by 2013, it would be the clear pace-setter in the highly competitive and long established world of Irish college sailing.

Robert O'Leary after winning the College J/80 Selection Series. Photo: W M Nixon

Yet such is the case. And what a pace they've been setting. Despite the coldest Irish spring in years, it was the Limerick college sailors who kicked the new season into action by hosting the three day Intervarsity Team Racing National Opens over the St Patrick's weekend in March. Run in Kerry in conjunction with the hospitable Tralee Bay SC, and sailed in Fireflies, the series attracted 26 teams. The logistical demands were such that Robert O'Leary stayed ashore as overall event manager, but UL was on a roll and they won the main title too, captained by Ross Murray.

Then in April O'Leary was very much afloat, skippering the UL crew in the Student Yachting Worlds Irish selection trials raced over three successive Saturdays in April in the ISA SailFleet J/80s, currently based in Howth. The format was demanding, as it involved getting your crew on site three times over a two week period, and then coping with very different conditions on three separate occasions. Yet UL won it in style .

MAY
ANNALISE MURPHY

Annalise Murphy (23) of Dun Laoghaire was runaway winner of the Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" title for May 2013 after her unprecedented tally of two Gold Medals in the month's top international events in Europe.

The venues could have not been more different. The Murphy run of success started at Lake Garda in Italy, racing among the mountains in the Italian Olympic Week 2013, a challenging event in which the Irish helm emerged supreme with just 2 points to the 5 points of next-in-line Tuula Tenkanen of Finland, and Tina Mihelic of Croatia.

Annalise Murphy's race winning form from Weymouth continued in 2013

The competition became even more intense two weeks later in the wide open spaces at Medemblik in The Netherlands for the Delta Lloyd Regatta. The Dutch weather was still giving a fair impression of winter, and the fleet included Olympic Gold Medallist Lijia Xu of China, and Silver Medallist Marit Bouwemester of the host nation.

Ireland's sailor went into the final medal race in third place, two points behind Alison Young (GBR) and Bouwemester. But in a complete reversal of the form shown in the final race of the Olympics in August 2012, it was Murphy who came confidently powering through to win by more than a minute and take the Gold, while China's star Olympic performer had to be content with sixth overall.

JUNE
BRIAN O'SULLIVAN

Brian O'Sullivan of Tralee Bay was the Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" for June following his clear overall win by more than an hour and forty minutes in the biennial 280-mile Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race between June 7th and 10th.

It was an outstanding month for Irish sailing achievements at home and abroad. But there was something specially heartening in these difficult times about a skipper from one of our most westerly clubs buying up a 33-year-old cruiser-racer, and showing that with a keen crew, and the right conditions, you can still take on Ireland's best and win.

Brian O'Sullivan's Amazing Grace had a stellar Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race. Photo: Michael Chester

As anyone who followed the ongoing D2D story and subsequent reports on Afloat.ie will be aware, the Oyster 37 Amazing Grace has played an important role in Irish sailing at ports such as Crosshaven, Kinsale and Fenit. Completed by Jim Fagan from a bare hull in a Cork farmyard (though to a standard that belies the tag of "home made"), this classic Holman and Pye design was only bought by Brian O'Sullivan from a fellow member of Tralee Bay SC as recently as the Spring of 2013.

But he knew he was getting a good boat with a decent set of sails. The challenge was to fulfill Amazing Grace's potential with a keen crew who could build up their enthusiasm for the big race from Dun Laoghaire, with Tralee providing a small but keen flotilla in the high quality 22-boat fleet. And when conditions fell their way through the race, they were keyed up to finish in the small hours of Monday morning, right in line for a great Kerry victory.

The crewing team on Amazing Grace were Finbarr O'Connell, Fergus Kelliher, Pearse Boyland, Tim Kelliher, Cian O'Donnell, Brendan Culloty and Michael McCormack, while the essential shoreside support and encouragement was provided by Frances Clifford. But ultimately, any successful team needs a capable leader, and aboard Amazing Grace they had that in Brian O'Sullivan, Sailor of the Month for June 2013.

JULY SAILOR OF THE MONTH
LIAM GLYNN

Ballyholme YC teenage helm Liam Glynn was the Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" for July after his comprehensive victory in a fleet of 102 boats at the Topper International Worlds at Loctudy in France in an intense week of racing at the Brittany venue from July 22nd to 26th.

Glynn arrived at the championship on top form with Silver already notched at the ISA Youth Nationals earlier in the season. But he showed his quality in depth by turning in an even better performance in France, despite very different conditions. The ISA Championship had been raced on the tide-free freshwater location of Lough Derg, but the Worlds were sailed in notably tidal salt water with often flukey breezes, and a sometimes lumpy sea state which was not always warranted by the wind strength.

Yet despite the huge fleet, the young Belfast Lough sailor put in the sort of consistent performance which is the ideal of any top skipper, senior or junior. His first four races were all top three placings, including two straight wins, which meant that as the series progressed he was building towards a comfortable cushion of 13 points over the next boat as the final day's racing arrived.

As it turned out, his work was done. The final day of racing was lost to calm, and Ireland had a new World Champion.

JULY INTERNATIONAL SAILING AWARD
BRUNO SROKA

From time to time, we honour sailors from other countries who have achieved outstanding success in Irish waters. But never has our International Award been for anything so extraordinary as French kitesurfer Bruno Sroka's 240 nautical miles voyage on Friday July 19th from L'Aber Wrach in northwest Brittany to Cork Harbour.

In a period of mostly light winds, Sroka was favoured by a beam reach 16 knot nor'easter which he carried with him almost all the way across the mouth of the English Channel, past the Isles of Scilly, and on across the Celtic Sea to a rapturous welcome in to Cork, the feat completed within his aimed time scale of 17 hours, the exact time being 16 hours and 37 minutes, an average of 14.45 knots.

The wind was fading as he neared the Irish coast, but there was just enough bite left in it to bring him to Roche's Point at sunset. A professional kitesurfer, he had already conquered the English Channel, and with his longterm ambition of being the first to get to Ireland from France fulfilled, he is now thinking in terms of the ultimate goal – New York to Brest in 2015.

AUGUST
JOHN TWOMEY

The summer of 2013 was the season in which world sailing came to Ireland. In addition to two World Championships, events such as the Volvo Dun Laoghaire Regatta and the Sovereigns Cup at Kinsale brought many sailing visitors to our shores. Then too, being a Rolex Fastnet Race year, 2013 saw a fleet of record-breaking size rounding our most famous rock, an event in which a dozen Irish boats took part.

The events which were staged from Irish ports involved an enormous amount of voluntary effort from our own communities, large and small. And skilled effort at that. Well-meaning willing helpers can be a mixed blessing. But when experienced administrators build up their chosen team of specialists as the allotted time of each major event approaches, the effective administrative machinery - virtually guaranteed when Ireland is hosting a big event - slips smoothly into place.

After such a summer of so much success in event management, there are many volunteers whose efforts deserve to be highlighted. So in making John Twomey of Kinsale the Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" for August, we hope that other organisers will realise that we are applauding their efforts too.

But amongst the elite of organisers, John is the crème de la crème.
An active participant himself to Olympic level, his election in November 2012 as President of the International Association For Disabled Sailing was a well-earned indication of the high regard in which he is held in global sailing. And in bringing the Worlds to his home port and ensuring that it was a success which was popular with the general public too, John Twomey played a unique role, deserving of national recognition and celebration.

SEPTEMBER
FINN LYNCH

The adjudicators in the Afloat.ie "Sailor of the Month" award for September were in the happy position of having a proliferation of major achievements to choose from, and they have the bonus of being able to draw on the "Previous Award" clause.

Like everyone else, we agreed that Annalise Murphy's comprehensive sweeping of the board at the Laser Europeans & Worlds at her home club of the National in Dun Laoghaire had been in a league of its own. But we'd already been on the case with the Murphy performance in 2013, as she was SoM in May after taking two gold medals in major European regattas.

Following a sensational debut in 2012, Finn Lynch consolidated his position as a rising star in 2013.

So with the award for Sailor of the Year 2013 now up for consideration, that May success is rated as a double win. But thanks to this bit of prestidigitation, we still had September's gong to give out, and that went to young Finn Lynch of County Carlow. He also counts the National YC as his home club, even if he did start his sailing at the lakeside club of Blessington up in the Wicklow hills.

When Lynch won the Silver at 2012's ISAF Youth Worlds in Dublin Bay, it was the maturity of the 16-year-old's approach which drew the most favourable comment. And in September 2013, at the ripe old age of 17, he was even more emphatically Irish sailing's Captain Cool. He took Gold in the U21 division, Silver in the Europeans, and Bronze in the Worlds. A phenomenal achievement, and a worthy September Sailor of the Month.

OCTOBER
DAVID KENEFICK

The French sailing scene is noted for its continuing national and international programme of encouraging young sailors in their early twenties into the top level of offshore competition. But even by the demanding Gallic standards of youthful participation against hardened veterans in events like the Figaro Solo, Corkman David Kenefick stood out as youngest of them all. He was just 21 when he qualified to become a Figaro 'rookie' mentored by Marcus Hutchinson, and though he turned 22 during June as the 2013 programme accelerated through a demanding season, he continued as the youngest in a schedule which saw him complete almost 7,000 offshore miles, nearly all of them single-handed.

David Kenefick took a mighty leap in the dark with his Figaro involvement, but showed he had the right stuff

As the busy season drew on he also began to acquire a useful smattering of French. And though there were some some big races whose results were eminently forgettable, in October's 1600 mile three stage Generali Solo, the Mediterranean's equivalent of the Figaro Solo itself, he was very much in contention to move towards the coveted "Rookie of the Year" slot.

The Generali Solo reached a climax after its three offshore stages, with three inshore races in perfect yet sometimes quite demanding conditions of 15 to 22 knots of wind. Kenefick's tally of 13,10, and 9th much improved his position on the leaderboard, and he moved into a commanding 12th overall. With the next rookie back in 16th slot, his place was secure, and becoming Figaro Solo Rookie of the Year 2013 made David Kenefick the Afloat.ie Sailor of the Month for October 2013.

NOVEMBER
ADRIAN LEE

For many decades, the Straits of Hormuz were one of those potential flashpoints which could have ignited World War III. In an oil-rich region of extreme political and religious turbulence, this narrow channel connecting the The Gulf with the oceans of the world has been just about the last place you would have thought of routing an offshore race.

Yet there are few things more strongly symbolic of peace than a please boat sailing about her business, even if the business is the cut-throat matter of winning an offshore race. In fact, pleasure boating in all its forms is the essence of peaceful pursuits, something well-recognised by those who promoted the building of the Shannon-Erne Waterways right through the middle of a border area which was suffering grievously throughout Ireland's "Troubles" from 1969 to 1998.

And in offshore racing, these days we think it perfectly normal that Harry Donegan of Cork with his cutter Gull should have been one of the seven entrants in the inaugural Fastnet Race in 1925. Yet that first Fastnet Race was not only staged just three years after the Irish Free State had been established, but its course took the contenders right into the territorial waters of the Rebel County's most rebellious region of West Cork. The presence of the Gull in the race was a powerful gesture of peace and reconciliation.

Adrian Lee's Cookson 50 Lee Overlay Partners sails sweetly and swiftly on her way to winning line honours, the course record, and first overall in the Dubai-Muscat Race

The 360 mile race from Dubai to Muscat in Oman may take place between two states which are receptive to western concepts, but with Iran looming close to the north and Saudi Arabia a huge presence to the south, it's a bizarre enough setting for something so western as modern offshore racing. Yet is has been staged annually for 22 years now, but it is only relatively recently, as the first green shoots of a greater peacefulness spread over the Gulf area, that it has been allowed to achieve the kind of publicity it deserves.

So from being a fleet of local Dubai-based boats which just nipped round the corner to Muscat, it has begun to attract high profile entries to race a course which re-traces part of the ancient spice voyaging routes. But though the local Dubai-based inshore racing sports dhows can reach remarkable speeds, for the demands of a 360 miles offshore in the first weekend of November 2013 it was a tried and tested classic modern offshore racer, the canting-keel Cookson 50 Lee Overlay Partners, which did the business to take a new course record of 2 days 53 minutes and 40 seconds and the overall win, adding them to her overall victory (as Chieftain) in the 2007 Fastnet Race, and her overall win in the inaugural 2009 RORC Caribbean 600 race.

Skipper Adrian Lee hit a happy moment, as his club, the Royal St George YC in Dun Laoghaire, was at precisely the same time celebrating its 175th anniversary by honouring the 597 members who had won major sailing prizes down the years. The Lee victory brought the total up to 598 before the weekend was over. Lee Overlay Partner's crew for the RORC Dubai-Muscat Race 2013 were James Hemingway, Ilya Lee Paveliev, Scott Wilson, Emmet Kerin, James Gunn, Tim Corney, Neil Harrison, Ruairi Herraghty, Robert Witte and Daniel McKeown, and their skipper Adrian Lee very deservedly became the Afloat.ie "sailor of the Month" for November.

DECEMBER
BEN DUNCAN

With a cut-off date at midnight on Christmas Eve, the lineup for Afloat.ie's "Sailor of the Month" title for December provided only three weeks of performance time, but it allowed the adjudicators to spread their net across the entire year's sailing.

And throughout 2013, one sailor was in close contention for the "Sailor of the Month" award more times than anyone else, yet always missed the top title by a hairsbreadth. But when his year-long performance was considered in its entirety, Ireland's resident Kiwi skipper Ben Duncan was in a league of his own. He became Sailor of the Month for December as the sleigh bells started to jingle.

Finishing his season in style. Ben Duncan on his way to winning the All Ireland in a SailFleet J/80. Photo: Aidan Tarbett.

Duncan is best known for his scientific and extremely thorough approach to campaigning his SB20 at home and abroad. He has raised the sailing of these very special boats to a new level. And in October, after a season of success at home and abroad, he was on top of his form to win the concluding championship on Lough Derg.

But the Duncan success path in 2013 didn't end there. The end of October brought a highly specialised challenge to many top helms and Race Officer Neil Murphy. The All Ireland Championship at Howth in the SailFleet J/80s, scheduled as a two day event, had to be put through in just one day's very crisply organised racing as one big storm cleared to the eastward, and another roared in from the west.

To add to the unnerving situation, a weather front with gale force gusts came streaking through at mid-event, requiring everyone to return to the harbour. Yet despite the interruptions, the programme was completed with excellent racing, with sunshine for a bonus. And despite sailing in a boat other than his beloved SB20, Ben Duncan put in the performance of a lifetime for a runaway win to round out a great year.

Cast your vote – Click here to vote for your sailor 

Once again the time has come to decide who among the deserving winners of Sailor of the Month should take the top honour of Afloat's Sailor of the Year.

As in previous years, Afloat magazine is asking the public to make their choice from among Ireland's finest sailors who delivered on the water in 2013.

The overall national award will be presented to the individual or individuals who, in the judges' opinion, achieved the most notable results in, or made the most significant contribution to, Irish watersports during 2013.

This year voting will take place through Afloat.ie from January 1st 2014.

SCROLL DOWN TO READ EACH ACHIEVEMENT AND VOTE FOR YOUR SAILOR AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE. WE WELCOME YOUR COMMENTS IN OUR COMMENT BOX BELOW, TOO!

The boating public gets to nominate their top three through the online poll, Afloat gets a vote too, and the Sailor of the Year judges decide the final winner.

Cast your vote by midnight on February 18th. The awards are administered and judged by Afloat magazine. The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

.........................

Gordon Maguire - Top helm down under

Though he's now based in Australia, Gordon Maguire maintains strong links with home, and his many successes as sailing master of the 63ft Reichel Pugh sloop Loki are shared by Ireland's maritime community.

Maguire began 2013 celebrating 53 straight weeks of achievement at the head of a mixed pro-am crew, confirming Loki as overall champion in the Australian Blue Water Points Score, the ultimate test of offshore racing dedication.

Four years of hard work are paying off in spades!

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Simon & Nancy de Pietro - Caribbean's dynamic duo

A convincing win in Class 1 in the RORC Caribbean 600 Race demanded that Simon and Nancy de Pietro be named Sailors of the Month for February.

The couple, with strong links to North Cork and Sligo, fly the burgee of Kinsale Yacht Club for their international sailing programme on the 76ft Lilla, alternating between racing success and a regular working life cruising the Caribbean.

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Fergus & Kay Quinlan - A worldwide double act

Fergus and Kay Quinlan's three-year voyage around the world in their own-built 12m steel cutter Pylades has been an inspiration to Ireland's sailing community.

And it's netted the Kinvara couple the Ocean Sailing Club's special OCC Award for doing so much to encourage small-craft ocean cruising. That's on top of their three years of Faulkner Cup awards.

But for the Quinlans, awards are less important than the "boundless horizons" of the ocean.

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Robert O'Leary - Consistency key for varsity success

He might be the youngest of the Crosshaven clan that includes a double Olympian, but Robert O'Leary is hardly overshadowed.

Indeed, the young skipper at the sporting hotbed University of Limerick played a key role in Irish varsity sailing through March and April this year - and was especially consistent at the Student Yachting Worlds selection trials in Howth.

Such success was more than enough for the younger O'Leary to be named Sailor of the Month for April.

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Annalise Murphy - Another outstanding performance

Annalise Murphy was the runaway winner of May's Sailor of the Month award for her gold medal success in Lake Garda and Medemblik.

The latter venue - at the David Lloyd Regatta - saw our Olympic hero make up for missing out on bronze at London 2012, while China's Olympic gold winner Lijia Xu had to settle for sixth.

It was a complete reversal of the form Murphy showed in the Olympic final, and bodes very well for her future.

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Brian O'Sullivan - D2D winner is Kerry's gold

June's Sailor of the Month Brian O'Sullivan secured victory by more than 1 hour 40 minutes in the 280-mile Dun Laoghaire to Dingle Race.

The 33-year-old from Tralee Bay Sailing Club only took ownership of the storied Oyster 37 Amazing Grace in spring this year.

But he knew what he was buying, and made the most of her potential with an enthusiastic crew - and just the right conditions - to get a decisive win in the biennial race.

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Bruno Sroka - Kitesurfing king of the seas

Never has the mid-year International Award been presented for anything as extraordinary as kitesurfer Bruno Sroka's 240 nautical mile solo voyage from Brittany to Cork Harbour on Friday 19 July.

With just board and kite, the Frenchman defied the threat of light winds to catch a 16-knot nor'easter that carried him almost all the way across the mouth of the English Channel, past the Scilly Isles and over the Celtic Sea well under his target time of 17 hours.

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Liam Glynn - Topper teen's big week

Ballyholme Yacht Club's Liam Glynn arrived at the Topper International Worlds in France with a silver in the Youth Nationals and a win at the Topper Nationals already notched this year.

But the teenage helm turned in an even better performance in Loctudy from 22 to 26 July, despite difficult tidal waters and flukey breezes - and a 100-strong fleet.

Though day five was lost to calm, Glynn's work was done in the first four races. We have a new World Champion!

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John Twomey - A dab hand at sail and on land

An active sailor himself to Paralympic level, John Twomey's election last November as president of the International Association For Disabled Sailing (IFDS) was an indication of the high regard in which he's held in global sailing.

In bringing the Worlds to his home port - and ensuring it was a popular success - Twomey played a unique role deserving of national celebration. And his hand in next year's merger of the IFDS with the ISAF should bring further plaudits.

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Finn Lynch - Captain Cool's triple medal haul

September provided a host of achievements to choose from, but Laser sailor Finn Lynch stood head and shoulders above the rest for his trio of medals in Dun Laoghaire: gold in the U21 division, silver in the Europeans and bronze in the Worlds.

It's the second Sailor of the Month award in as many years for the 17-year-old from Carlow (but sailing from the National YC) who's been dubbed 'Captain Cool' - and with very good reason.

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David Kenefick - Figaro rookie holds his own

Figaro 'rookie' David Kenefick was the youngest sailor in the 2013 schedule, turning just 22 as the demanding Gallic season progressed.

But the Corkman - mentored by Marcus Hutchinson - only rarely let his age or inexperience show across 7,000 gruelling offshore miles, nearly all of them sailed single-handed.

And a decisive 12th place overall in the three-stage Generali Solo in the Mediterranean secured our October Sailor of the Month the coveted position of Figaro Solo Rookie of the Year.

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Adrian Lee - Muscat Magic for offshore racer

 

Ireland's tame Kiwi Ben Duncan was in close contention for Sailor of the Month more times than any other skipper during the 2013 season, his successes in the SB20 being achieved at home and abroad. He also scored a convincing win in the All-Ireland Helmsman's Championship sailed in J/80s. Thus at year's end, we make him December's Sailor of the Month.ore racer

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Ben Duncan - Helmsmans victory for Duncan

 

A comprehensive victory (including a new course record) in the annual 360-mile Dubai to Muscat Race by Adrian Lee (RSTGYC) with his Cookson 50 Lee Overlay Partners was November's top achievement in Irish sailing. It added further lustre to a remarkable boat whose successes include the overall win in both the 2007 Fastnet and the inaugural RORC Caribbean 600 in 2009.

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#sailoroftheyear - You followed her impressive exploits right here on Afloat.ie throughout the year, and your votes counted. So it's only right that our Olympic sailing hero Annalise Murphy should receive the honour of being named Afloat.ie Sailor of the Year for 2012.

The young sailor was recognised for a remarkable 12 months of incredible achievement, capped off by her stirring performance at the London Olympics - and topped a shortlist that featured fellow Olympic challengers Peter O'Leary and David Burrows, and such up-and-coming talents as Sophie Browne, Finn Lynch and Fionn Lyden.

Murphy's simply outstanding fourth-place finish in the Laser Radial at the London Games was Ireland's best Olympic result in 30 years in any class. Despite the heartbreak of so narrowly missing out on Olympic bronze in the medal race, her accomplishment was appreciated far beyond the Irish sailing community, and raised the profile of the sport in Ireland immeasurably.

The then 22-year-old, who sails for the National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire, had the entire country on edge last August as she battled with what Afloat's own WM Nixon described as the "fierce challenge" of being top of the Women's Laser Radial class, in stature as well as performance.

At 6ft 1in, the woman they call 'The Irish Lever' was undoubtedly the tallest in her 41-boat fleet at London 2012, and some British yachting pundits were quick to put down her early regatta wins purely to her larger frame.

But Murphy - who headed to the Olympics with confidence after a podium finish at the Skandia Sail for Gold, and a medal at Weymouth the previous year - proved that her success was no fluke, holding the gold medal position for almost half the regatta and entering the last race in third place overall.

 

Facing unbelievable pressure as the regatta reached its final stages on the Nothe course in Weymouth, in tricky conditions that would spread wide the times of most club racers, it's to Murphy's estimable credit that she was able to keep so tight with the front-runners, and it was only in the last few seconds - and last few metres - that she was knocked out of the bronze position.

 

We'll never forget the tears she shed after the medal race's conclusion - the whole of Ireland shared in her heartbreak. But we also shared the belief that that was but one setback in a world-class sailing career that's only just beginning.

Considering the talented and dedicated NYC sailor and UCD student is still only 23, there's clearly plenty of sailing success awaiting in her future, and she starts 2013 on her 'Road to Rio' aiming to clinch a medal at the 2016 Olympic Games.

In spite of losing out on a podium finish at the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Miami earlier this month, the fact that she came so close - and led the charge in the early stages - proves that she can stand proudly with the elite in her class. And she'll have another chance to prove herself in the next round of the ISAF World Cup in Palma de Mallorca on 30 March.

The Sailor of the Year honour is the very least the amazing Annalise Murphy deserves for doing Ireland so proud in 2012.