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Displaying items by tag: Garrettstown Beach

The Irish Coast Guard's Kinsale unit was involved in the dramatic rescue of a man clinging to the sheer side of a cliff on Sunday.
TheJournal.ie reports that the man, a 20-something English tourist, had been caught on the beach below at high tide and tried to climb the cliff face to escape, but got into difficulty half-way up.
The man was spotted by a couple walking the clifftop near Garrettstown Beach, who alerted the Old Head of Kinsale coastguard unit.
A cliff rescue expert abseiled down to attach a lifeline and harness, and the man was lifted to safety. He was treated at the scene for cuts and bruises.
Unit officer in charge Eddie Butler told The Irish Examiner that the man didn’t know how he had held on as long he did.
"When we arrived and saw the situation, I didn’t think we’d save him. I think we got to him just in time," said Butler. "The water was raging beneath him. If he had lost his grip and fell in, he would have been lost."
Elsewhere, six people were rescued from a sinking cruiser in the River Shannon on Sunday afternoon following its collision with a bridge in Killaloe, Co Clare.
According to The Irish Times, two members of the Irish Coast Guard's Killaloe unit arrived quickly on scene two help the six occupants and their dog to safety on the riverside.
The Killaloe unit reports that the cruiser was subsequently run aground in the shallows at Ballyvalley to prevent its sinking.

The Irish Coast Guard's Kinsale unit was involved in the dramatic rescue of a man clinging to the sheer side of a cliff on Sunday.

TheJournal.ie reports that the man, a 20-something English tourist, had been caught on the beach below at high tide and tried to climb the cliff face to escape, but got into difficulty half-way up.

The man was spotted by a couple walking the clifftop near Garrettstown Beach, who alerted the Old Head of Kinsale coastguard unit. 

A cliff rescue expert abseiled down to attach a lifeline and harness, and the man was lifted to safety. He was treated at the scene for cuts and bruises.

Unit officer in charge Eddie Butler told the Irish Examiner that the man didn’t know how he had held on as long he did. 

"When we arrived and saw the situation, I didn’t think we’d save him. I think we got to him just in time," said Butler. "The water was raging beneath him. If he had lost his grip and fell in, he would have been lost." 

Elsewhere, six people were rescued from a sinking cruiser in the River Shannon on Sunday afternoon following its collision with a bridge in Killaloe, Co Clare.

According to The Irish Times, two members of the Irish Coast Guard's Killaloe unit arrived quickly on scene two help the six occupants and their dog to safety on the riverside.

The Killaloe unit reports that the cruiser was subsequently run aground in the shallows at Ballyvalley to prevent its sinking.

Published in Rescue

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)