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Displaying items by tag: Strabane

#Angling - Pauline McClenaghan and Gordon Armstrong are among the celebrity anglers lined up for the inaugural North West Angling Fair in Strabane, Co Tyrone later this month.

As the Londonderry Sentinel reports, the festival will take over the Melvin Sports Complex on the River Mourne on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 May and give visitors an opportunity to see some of the world's best fly-casters and fly-dressers in action.

Also in attendance will be world champion fly-caster Andrew Toft from Glasgow, Mooney Goes Wild contributor Ken Whelan and Scottish casting instructor and ghillie Scott Mackenzie. The Sentinel has more HERE.

In other angling news, anglers taking part in the Waterways Ireland-sponsored Classic Fishing Festival in Fermanagh last weekend were forced to abandon a fishing stand due to an overflow of sewage into Lower Lough Erne, according to the Fermanagh Herald.

While organisers moved to accommodate competitors elsewhere, it has since emerged that the overflow near Killadeas was one of several discharged permitted by NI Water, though none affected the festival's other fishing sections.

Published in Angling
A lost baby seal surprised workers at a plant hire yard in Strabane, Co Tyrone earlier this month, BBC News reports.
Staff at WT Hire were put in touch with a seal sanctuary in Newtownards when the pup was discovered on 6 January.
""I couldn't understand what it was," said staff member Nigel Gilchrist. "I certainly didn't expect to see a seal."
The "bright-eyed" and "healthy" looking seal pup is presumed to have wandered from a nearby stream that runs to the River Mourne.
BBC News has more in the story, including video, HERE.

A lost baby seal surprised workers at a plant hire yard in Strabane, Co Tyrone earlier this month, BBC News reports.

Staff at WT Hire were put in touch with a seal sanctuary in Newtownards when the pup was discovered on 6 January.

""I couldn't understand what it was," said staff member Nigel Gilchrist. "I certainly didn't expect to see a seal."

The "bright-eyed" and "healthy" looking seal pup is presumed to have wandered from a nearby stream that runs to the River Mourne.

BBC News has more in the story - including video - HERE.

Published in Marine Wildlife

Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.