A staple part of the DMYC calendar is our annual race around the Kish Lighthouse. This race is normally held towards the end of the summer sailing season, and provides the participants with something a little different from the usual round-the-cans racing that happens during the summer.

In August 1810, it was decided by the Corporation for preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin (the Ballast Board), later to become the Commissioners of Irish Lights, that it would be possible to maintain a floating light on the Kish Bank. The following year they purchased the Galliot Veronia Gesina of 103 tons, engaged a crew and fitted out the vessels as a floating light. The light was first exhibited on 16th November 1811. In foggy weather a gong was sounded but when the Holyhead Packet was expected an 18 pounder gun was fired.

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The construction of the lighthouse was soon under way again, the bottom portion of the lighthouse being built as a caisson with an outside diameter of 104 feet and a three feet thick base slab. There are three concentric walls of varying heights, the greatest being 91 feet.

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In November 1964 the caisson was towed to St. Michael’s wharf where the construction was almost completed and on the evening of 29th June 1965, it was towed out of Dun Laoghaire Harbour to the Kish Bank and later sunk on a level platform of stones which had previously been prepared by divers and buoyed by the Irish Lights Tenders.

http://www.cil.ie/safety-navigation/our-lighthouses/kish-bank.aspx