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Displaying items by tag: Brief Cork Call

Irish Mainport Holdings was delighted to welcome one of their two seismic support ships, Mainport Cedar, when the vessel made a brief call to Cork Harbour recently.

The 54.6m length overall (LOA) Mainport Cedar, made the call to the Port of Cork while in transit from Namibia to Rotterdam, Netherlands, having worked in the southern African nation since October 2023, at the base port of Walvis Bay & Luderitz.

Currently, the 1,659 gross tonnage vessel is underway in the North Sea, from where it will work with the same client for the summer season, engaging in a number of seismic support projects with this client.

During the call to the port in Munster, this facilitated carrying out a Class Annual inspections of the vessel (built in 2013 by Shin Yang Miri Malaysia), with ship classification society, (BV) Bureau Veritas.

In addition, the call to a Cork City central quay, led to the availing of local service providers and to renew some of the annual inspections / maintenance on safety equipment, and life saving appliances etc.

The call was also an opportunity for a crew change (11 on 11 off) and both of the crews agreed to pose for the new Mainport Cedar football team (as pictured above) where the off signers are the lads with the biggest smiles!

Mainport Cedar departed Cork last Friday for Rotterdam, and Afloat this afternoon tracked the vessel north-east of the Shetlands, having departed the Dutch port bound for Ålesund, western Norway, from where this will be the ship’s base port for the crew’s next project.

The second seismic support ship (part of the group’s mixed fleet) is the Mainport Pine, built a year later of its twin and was also launched from the same shipyard in Asia.

Published in Cork Harbour

The GP14 is a popular sailing dinghy, with well over 14,000 boats built.

The class is active in the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and parts of north-eastern USA, and the GP14 can be used for both racing and cruising. 

Designed by Jack Holt in 1949, with the assistance of the Dovey Yacht Club in Aberdyfi. The idea behind the design was to build a General Purpose (GP) 14-foot dinghy which could be sailed or rowed, capable of also being powered effectively by a small outboard motor, able to be towed behind a small family car and able to be launched and recovered reasonably easily, and stable enough to be able to lie to moorings or anchor when required. Racing soon followed, initially with some degree of opposition from Yachting World, who had commissioned the design, and the boat soon turned out to be an outstanding racing design also.

The boat was initially designed with a main and small jib as a comfortable family dinghy. In a design philosophy that is both practical and highly redolent of social attitudes of the day the intention was that she should accommodate a family comprising parents plus two children, and specifically that the jib should be modest enough for "Mum" or older children to handle, while she should perform well enough to give "Dad" some excitement when not taking the family out. While this rig is still available, and can be useful when using the boat to teach sailing, or for family sailing, and has some popularity for cruising, the boat is more commonly seen with the full modern rig of a mainsail, genoa and spinnaker. Australian boats also routinely use trapezes.

GP14 Ireland Event Dates 2023

  • O'Tiarnaigh (Apr 22-23) Blessington Sailing Club
  • Ulsters (May 20-21) East Antrim Boat Club
  • Munsters (Jun 17-18) Tralee Bay Sailing Club
  • Leinsters (Jul 7-9) Dun Laoghaire Regatta
  • SOYC (Aug 19-20) Rush Sailing Club
  • Nationals (Sep 1-3) Sutton Dinghy Club
  • Hot Toddy (Sep 30-Oct 1) Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club

 

At A Glance – GP14 Dinghy Specifications

Crew 2
Draft 1,200 mm (47 in)
Hull weight 132.9 kg
LOA 4.27 m (14 ft)
Beam 1.54 m
Spinnaker area 8.4 m2
Upwind sail area 12.85 m2

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