Displaying items by tag: Naval Sailors

12th June 2019

Organisation 'Very Sceptical' of Dept's Plans to Overhaul Haulbowline Accommodation for Sailors

The Irish Naval Service base at Haulbowline in lower Cork Harbour

An organisation which represents enlisted personnel in the Defence Forces says it's "very sceptical" about the Department of Defence's claim that it will address the accommodation crisis at Naval Service headquarters "as a matter of urgency".

PDFORRA's president Mark Keane, writes The Irish Examiner, said plans to convert a Victorian-era block at Haulbowline Island were drawn up in 2014 and since then nothing had happened, even though more and more sailors are now sleeping on ships.

As far back as March 1992, the then Defence Forces Quartermaster General (equivalent today to a Deputy Chief of Staff) recommended that accommodation at military barracks should be adequate and "aspire to the standard within the civilian community generally".

Latest figures obtained from Defence Forces sources show more than 70 sailors are sleeping on ships at the naval base.

Many are young and so poorly paid they can't afford soaring rents and have no choice but to live on board the vessels they crew.

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New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup

Ireland has a proud history in New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup, with Irish participation from the very start and a podium result in 2019.

In 2009, two Irish Clubs, Royal St. George in Dun Laoghaire and Royal Cork in Crosshaven, entered into New York's newest sailing competition that was reminiscent of Newport’s America’s Cup days when 19 yacht club teams from 14 nations descended on this “City by the Sea”.

The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is a competition between yacht clubs, with strict eligibility rules ensuring that each team is comprised exclusively of amateur sailors.

The competition, which was first run in 2009, has drawn entries from 49 clubs from 22 nations on all six inhabited continents.

The New York Yacht Club won the inaugural event in 2009, with the Royal Canadian Yacht Club winning in 2011 and 2013, England's Royal Thames Yacht Club winning in 2015 and Southern Yacht Club from New Orleans winning in 2017.

In 2019 the regatta was sailed for the first time in the New York Yacht Club’s fleet of IC37 yachts, and Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, from Australia, became the first Southern Hemisphere club to win the trophy. And it was in this edition that Anthony O’Leary’s Royal Cork team took the bronze medal.