Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

'Dublin Bay Sailing Club incorporating Royal Alfred Yacht Club' – Is This The New Name for Yacht Racing in the Capital?

27th January 2016
dbsc_rayc_merger
Two senior Dublin clubs are planning a merger

There may well be a new name for yacht racing on Dublin Bay this season as merger talks between Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) and the Royal Alfred Yacht Club (RAYC) continue.

RAYC Flag Officers meet tonight in Dun Laoghaire to discuss the proposition of incorporating the historic club into the rival race organisation, DBSC.

According to an Afloat.ie source the proposals include a new name: 'Dublin Bay Sailing Club incorporating Royal Alfred Yacht Club' as well as the transfer of some historic yachting silvereware to the expanded DBSC. The RAYC will get a seat at the DBSC committee table to ensure the 'ethos' of the RAYC is preserved, according to the source. Two regattas per year will race under the RAYC burgee or its name at least and any RAYC monies left over after any wind up will be put towards an improved computerised results service for Dublin Bay racers.

As Afloat.ie reported previously the merger talks flagged for January come after years of deliberation.

Race Results

You may need to scroll vertically and horizontally within the box to view the full results

Published in DBSC
Afloat.ie Team

About The Author

Afloat.ie Team

Email The Author

Afloat.ie is Ireland's dedicated marine journalism team.

Have you got a story for our reporters? Email us here.

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven't put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full-time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.

Direct Donation to Afloat button

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.