Displaying items by tag: coffin ships

9th September 2011

Mutton Island Lighthouse To Shine Once More

The refurbished Mutton Island lighthouse in Galway Bay will open to tour groups on a regular basis next year, the Galway City Tribune reports.

Once one of the final landmarks of the city seen by emigrants leaving on the 'coffin ships' bound for the United States in the Great Famine, its light last shone in 1977.

The protected lighthouse and its island were purchased by Galway City Council for a total of £2, and since then the 18th-century building fell into disrepair - although the island thrived as a sanctuary for artic terns and Claddagh swans.

But in 2005 a project was intitiated by Galway City Council and the Galway Civic Trust, involving FÁS trainees to restore the lighthouse and its grounds to their former glory, and the fruits of this labour are set to be unveiled next spring.

Recent free tours of the building for Hertiage Week were hugely popular, providing high hopes for the lighthouse and its gardens to become a valuable new amenity for the City of the Tribes.

The Galway City Tribune has more on the story HERE.

Published in Lighthouses

Tagged under

Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.