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Displaying items by tag: Residensea's The World

#PORTS & SHIPPING REVIEW - Over the last fortnight, Jehan Ashmore has reported from the shipping scene, where a brand new multi-purpose heavy-lift vessel Abis Dublin made her maiden 'Irish' call to her namesake port carrying wind-turbine components.

In this year of The Gathering, Dublin Port is to welcome a record number of cruiseships, with more than 100 calls this season to include several new operators.

The fleet of Irish Ferries vessels are taking turns to undergo dry-docking maintenance at the Cammell Laird facility in Birkenhead, where French routes cruiseferry Oscar Wilde is due next month.

The tug that 'righted' the Fastnet Race entrant Rambler 100 in west Cork in 2011, had recently towed a completely different type of vessel, Skerchi, a construction barge to Dublin Port, where the vessel is currently in dry-dock.

Galway Harbour is to welcome The World, the 41,188 tonnes exclusive ultra-luxury residential passenger ship when she opens the 2013 cruise season in July with a two-night anchorage call.

Having operated 12 days of Christmas service, Stena Line's HSS Stena Explorer is taking a break off-service, however, the fastcraft returns for a second year operating a seasonal-summer only schedule.

Shannon Foynes Port Company's draft masterplan "Vision 2041"  is to develop port infrastructure and services of the estuary over the next three decades.

Once again the former Dutch dredger Lough Foyle has been contracted by Drogheda Port Company to carry out work at to the mouth of the Boyne.

An extra 3,000 'coach' passengers will have an opportunity to visit Ireland as part of an Irish Ferries initiative worth up to EUR60,000 to promote the nation to UK and overseas tourists.

London 2012, a 82,562 dwt bulk-carrier which after docking at Auginish on the Shannon Estuary, recently weighed anchor offshore of the world famous Ballybunion Golf Course. At the next Olympics of Rio de Janeiro 2016, golf will return to the Games.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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)