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Displaying items by tag: MV WB Yeats

The Irish Ferries W.B. Yeats ran into heavy weather on its Dublin to Cherbourg route last Sunday morning (13th March) resulting in damage to its upper car deck as the video below shows.

The 200-metre long ferry was forced to turn around and return to Dublin Port in the strong winds and big seas as her track of the day below shows. 

Irish Ferries W.B. YeatsIrish Ferries W.B. Yeats

In a statement, Irish Ferries confirmed that Sunday’s "W.B. Yeats sailing from Dublin to Cherbourg was impacted by heavier weather than forecast which caused some minor damage on the upper car deck. The ship returned to Dublin, which is the normal protocol when these events happen. Irish Ferries rerouted passengers impacted, and apologise for the weather-related disruption.”

MV W.B. Yeats is a RORO passenger and freight vessel. She arrived in Dublin for the first time on 20 December 2018 and entered service in January 2019.

Afloat sources say the ship offloaded its cargo on return to Dublin and headed to the repair dock on Belfast Lough.

Published in Irish Ferries
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About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).