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Displaying items by tag: Irish Offshore Sailing

The Sailing School entry 'Sherkin Irish Offshore Sailing' has retired from the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race this evening with a 'mechanical issue'. 

Winds were strong northerlies around 25 knots at the time.

The Sunfast 37 yacht skippered by David Hanks is recorded by the race tracker as retired and has pulled into Kinsale in West Cork.

Published in Round Ireland

Irish Offshore Sailing has extended its sail training and yacht racing programmes for 2020 with a full range of motor cruising courses on a specially fitted-out and coded motor yacht.

Skippered by Yachtmaster Instructor Peter Beamish, the training boat is a Lochin 333 Harbour Pilot named Gaviota. Fitted with twin Perkins 300 HP engines, she has a cruising speed of 16 knots and a top speed of 24 knots.

Fully equipped with modern instruments and electronic engine controls, Gaviota is commercially coded in Ireland and the UK, and has all the safety equipment required for up to 10 people

Irish Offshore Sailing is now the only Irish Sailing and RYA recognised training centre in Ireland that can offer motor cruising courses which include Start Motor Cruising, Helmsman, Day Skipper, Advanced Pilotage, Coastal Skipper, and Yachtmaster Offshore Power.

See IrishOffshoreSailing.com for the full schedule of all motor cruising courses in 2020. And for more information please contact Peter Beamish on 087 672 9999.

Published in Sailing Schools

The Dragon was designed by Johan Anker in 1929 as an entry for a competition run by the Royal Yacht Club of Gothenburg, to find a small keel-boat that could be used for simple weekend cruising among the islands and fjords of the Scandinavian seaboard. The original design had two berths and was ideally suited for cruising in his home waters of Norway. The boat quickly attracted owners and within ten years it had spread all over Europe.

The Dragon's long keel and elegant metre-boat lines remain unchanged, but today Dragons are constructed using the latest technology to make the boat durable and easy to maintain. GRP is the most popular material, but both new and old wooden boats regularly win major competitions while looking as beautiful as any craft afloat. Exotic materials are banned throughout the boat, and strict rules are applied to all areas of construction to avoid sacrificing value for a fractional increase in speed.

The key to the Dragon's enduring appeal lies in the careful development of its rig. Its well-balanced sail plan makes boat handling easy for lightweights, while a controlled process of development has produced one of the most flexible and controllable rigs of any racing boat.