Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Six Nations Championships

Fastnet Line's 21,699 tonnes Julia which has been undergoing annual maintenance at a dry-dock in Swansea, is due to resume sailings for the 2011 season with a departure from the south Welsh port tomorrow night, writes Jehan Ashmore.
The 1,500 passenger / 30 truck capacity vessel is scheduled to depart Swansea at 20.30hrs on the overnight crossing with an arrival on Thursday morning at Cork's Ringaskiddy ferry terminal. The sailing will mark the first anniversary of company operations on the Celtic Sea route.

West Cork Tourism Co-Op launched the company a year ago as a result of a successful campaign to restore the direct service between Wales and the southern Ireland. Many businesses from the region and their Welsh counterparts invested in the co-op to restore the link since the closure by Swansea Cork Ferries in 2006.

Fastnet Line will continue to be in a celebratory mode with the first outbound sailing from Cork on Friday and which will also cater for a special-rugby supporters trip for this weekend's Six Nations Championship between Ireland and Wales at the Millenium Stadium, Cardiff. The Friday sailing departs Cork at 20.30hrs and arrives at 08.00hrs in Swansea on the Saturday morning with the game kicking off at 17.00hrs (5pm).

The company are offering various foot passenger deals to the match. A return bus transfer is also available between the ferry terminal and the game venue (but at an extra cost). In addition there are deals for those wanting to take the car. The after match sailing departs at 23.50 with the ferry arriving back in Cork at 12.00 noon on Sunday 13 March. For further information on fares etc click here

Published in Ferry

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.