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Displaying items by tag: Mizen Head

#RNLI - Baltimore RNLI assisted two sailors yesterday evening (Monday 14 August) after their yacht lost power off Mizen Head in West Cork.

The alarm was raised earlier in the afternoon following a report from the crew of a 26ft yacht that they had lost all battery power.

At the time, the occupants were comfortable sailing the yacht towards Baltimore, so the lifeboat was put on standby until they were closer.

However, due to a confused sea in a strong tideway, the yacht was making very little progress towards land and required assistance to get to port.

The inshore lifeboat, helmed by Micheal Cottrell and with crew members Ryan O’Mahony and Colin Rochford on board, left station at 7.20pm and met the yacht three miles west of Cape Clear Island just before 8pm.

Weather conditions at the time were relatively good, with a Force 3 south-westerly wind and a one-metre sea swell.

One of the lifeboat crew went aboard the yacht to assist with rigging a tow and, once that was established at 8.05pm, a course was set for North Harbour in Cape Clear where the vessel was moored safely at 8.55pm.

Speaking following the callout, Cottrell said: “The sailors did the right thing in initially alerting people ashore to their predicament and then seeking the assistance of the lifeboat before darkness when their situation wasn’t improving.”

Published in RNLI Lifeboats

#coastalnotes – Following on from Winkie Nixon's blog a fortnight ago about the Sailing and boating wonders of West Cork, here's a selection of aerial views from the Baltimore Beacon to Mizen Head taking in Lough Hyne, Ballydehob, Foil na Muc, Bantry House, Mount Gabriel, Cadogans Strand, Schull Community Inshore Rescue Headquarters and Barleycove on the way.

The Video was shot from a Octocopter UAV platform with a GoPro Hero 3+ and uploaded to youtube by the Eye in the Sky.

Published in Coastal Notes
The full report of the investiation into the loss of a crewman from the fishing vessel Janireh earlier this year is now availble online.
Egyptian national Nadi Sehsaah died after falling overboard from the trawler some 20 nautical miles south west of Mizen Head. It is believed he was not wearing a floation device at the time of the accident.
The Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) has said there is an onus on the fishing industry to improve safety standards across the board, accoring to the Irish Examiner - which has more on the story HERE.
The MCIB report is available to download HERE.

The full report of the investigation into the loss of a crewman from the fishing vessel Janireh earlier this year is now available online.

Egyptian national Nadi Sehsaah died after falling overboard from the trawler some 20 nautical miles south west of Mizen Head. It is believed he was not wearing a flotation device at the time of the accident.

The Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) has said there is an onus on the fishing industry to improve safety standards across the board, according to the Irish Examiner - which has more on the story HERE.

The MCIB report is available to download HERE.

Published in Water Safety

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)