Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Polar Ship

The President of the Nautical Institute, the worldwide representative organisation for maritime professionals has told its Irish branch that reality must be separated from the myths about shipping using Polar waters writes Tom MacSweeney.

Capt. David (Duke) Snider from Canada has written the Institute's book on ice navigation 'Polar Ship Operations'. He told Institute members at a meeting in the National Maritime College in Cork that the vast majority of operators in Polar waters had a lot of experience and were "long-term" players in the region.

It was a myth that "wild cowboys" of shipping were "roaring through the Arctic polluting and destroying the environment". He said that global climate change had opened up the Arctic. Change was visual and real.

The Polar Code has been introduced by the International Maritime Organisation. It did not have everything in it that everyone wanted but it was a start and more work was necessary and would be done on it.

Published in Ports & Shipping

The Dragon was designed by Johan Anker in 1929 as an entry for a competition run by the Royal Yacht Club of Gothenburg, to find a small keel-boat that could be used for simple weekend cruising among the islands and fjords of the Scandinavian seaboard. The original design had two berths and was ideally suited for cruising in his home waters of Norway. The boat quickly attracted owners and within ten years it had spread all over Europe.

The Dragon's long keel and elegant metre-boat lines remain unchanged, but today Dragons are constructed using the latest technology to make the boat durable and easy to maintain. GRP is the most popular material, but both new and old wooden boats regularly win major competitions while looking as beautiful as any craft afloat. Exotic materials are banned throughout the boat, and strict rules are applied to all areas of construction to avoid sacrificing value for a fractional increase in speed.

The key to the Dragon's enduring appeal lies in the careful development of its rig. Its well-balanced sail plan makes boat handling easy for lightweights, while a controlled process of development has produced one of the most flexible and controllable rigs of any racing boat.