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Displaying items by tag: Trainee ships

#NavalVisits - A trio of French Navy trainee ships docked in Dublin Port for a crew rest and recreation visit to the capital this weekend, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The Léopard class school-training vessels each with 18 students, had arrived yesterday and berthed along Sir John Rogersons Quay.

Each of the small ships measure 43m in length and have a beam of 8.30m. The trio are the Lynx, Panthère and Tigre.

Displacing 335 tonnes, the sisters are part of an eight-strong class that were commissioned in the early 1980's. Among them Jaguar which along with Tigre called to Dun Laoghaire Harbour just over a year ago.  

Arnament comprises of pair of 12.7mm guns. 

The range of the Léopard class is 5,000 nautical based on a speed of 12 knots.

Published in Naval Visits

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago