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Displaying items by tag: Damien Oliver

Trinity House, the General Lighthouse Authority (GLA) for England, Wales, Channel Islands and Gibraltar, has recently appointed Damien Oliver as its new Director of Major Projects. 

Damien’s appointment sees him as the lead on the Vessel Replacement Project, where he will work closely with internal and external stakeholders to drive forward the procurement process to a successful conclusion.

The Vessel Replacement Project is to replace the veteran aids to navigation tender, THV Patricia as Afloat previously reported dating to 1982, which made a rare call to Dun Laoghaire Harbour on the occasion of Irish Lights officially opening its new headquarters in 2008.

Damien joins Trinity House direct from a short-term secondment to Sellafield where he led major decommissioning programmes to make safe their 75-year-old nuclear legacy.

He also has over 20 years’ experience in senior roles within the Maritime Coastguard Agency (MCA) making him ideally suited to Trinity House as a GLA and our specific responsibility for navigational safety.

Published in Lighthouses

The Rankin Dinghy of Cobh, Cork Harbour 

A Rankin is a traditional wooden dinghy which was built in Cobh, of which it’s believed there were 80 and of which The Rankin Dinghy Group has traced nearly half. 

The name of the Rankin dinghies is revered in Cork Harbour and particularly in the harbourside town of Cobh.

And the name of one of those boats is linked to the gunboat which fought against the Irish Volunteers during the 1916 Easter Rising and later for the emergent Irish Free State Government against anti-Treaty Forces during the Irish Civil War.

It also links the renowned boat-building Rankin family in Cobh, one of whose members crewed on the gunboat.

Maurice Kidney and Conor English are driving the restoration of the Rankin dinghies in Cork Harbour. They have discovered that Rankins were bought and sailed in several parts of the country.