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Displaying items by tag: service to resume

Ferry company, Stena Line is to resume sailings from Fishguard to Rosslare this Sunday, 5 March, just over three weeks since Stena Europe was taken off the Wales-Ireland route due to an engine room blaze.

As the Western Telegraph writes, the port in Pembrokeshire is to welcome the return of the Stena Europe following repairs to the engine room when the blaze took place off the Welsh coast on Saturday, 11 February.

Dating to 1981, the veteran vessel was repaired at the Cammel Laird shipyard, Birkenhead at the Tranmere Basin as Afloat previously reported and where a planned maintenance also took place.

Stena Europe which at more than 40 year's old, has for half that time spent a career on the Wales-Ireland route, is to be replaced in July by the 2001 built Stena Nordica.

This ropax ferry which is based on the Baltic Sea, Afloat adds previously served on the Irish Sea but on the Holyhead-Dublin route until replaced in 2015. Since then the ropax has returned to the Irish Sea as a relief ferry during annual winter dry-dockings.

As for the St. Georges Channel route, Stena Europe’s arrival in Fishguard is scheduled for this Saturday in readiness for the next day’s first passenger and freight crossing at 1300 on Sunday. On the same day, the ferry is to return from Rosslare at 18.15.

Stena Line’s trade director Irish Sea, Paul Grant, said: “We are very pleased to have Stena Europe back sailing from this Sunday, for its last few months on our Fishguard – Rosslare route; until it is replaced by a new look Stena Nordica in the summer.

"Thank you to all our customers for their patience.”

Published in Stena Line

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)