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Displaying items by tag: Habitiles

A Cornish harbour has teamed up with a local environmental charity to install a set of special tiles to make a ‘living wall’ for marine wildlife and plant life.

According to Marine Industry News, the ‘Habitiles’ now in place in Falmouth Harbour are designed with nooks and crannies for marine life to proliferate where it normally wouldn’t in a flat-walled harbour.

“We’ll see seaweeds and algae making their home here which then provide shelter and food for small invertebrates which in turn become a food source for larger animals,” said Tina Robinson from charity Our Only World.

The tiles are manufactured locally from byproducts of the granite and quarrying industries, and manufacturer ARC Marine says their production will soon be carbon-neutral.

Similar installations in Plymouth and Australia use tiles made by Sydney-based Living Seawalls, which recently signed a production and supply partnership for the UK and Ireland with Co Offaly’s Inland and Coastal Marina Systems (ICMS).

Marine Industry News has more on the story HERE.

Published in Marine Wildlife

The GP14 is a popular sailing dinghy, with well over 14,000 boats built.

The class is active in the UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Sri Lanka and parts of north-eastern USA, and the GP14 can be used for both racing and cruising. 

Designed by Jack Holt in 1949, with the assistance of the Dovey Yacht Club in Aberdyfi. The idea behind the design was to build a General Purpose (GP) 14-foot dinghy which could be sailed or rowed, capable of also being powered effectively by a small outboard motor, able to be towed behind a small family car and able to be launched and recovered reasonably easily, and stable enough to be able to lie to moorings or anchor when required. Racing soon followed, initially with some degree of opposition from Yachting World, who had commissioned the design, and the boat soon turned out to be an outstanding racing design also.

The boat was initially designed with a main and small jib as a comfortable family dinghy. In a design philosophy that is both practical and highly redolent of social attitudes of the day the intention was that she should accommodate a family comprising parents plus two children, and specifically that the jib should be modest enough for "Mum" or older children to handle, while she should perform well enough to give "Dad" some excitement when not taking the family out. While this rig is still available, and can be useful when using the boat to teach sailing, or for family sailing, and has some popularity for cruising, the boat is more commonly seen with the full modern rig of a mainsail, genoa and spinnaker. Australian boats also routinely use trapezes.

GP14 Ireland Event Dates 2023

  • O'Tiarnaigh (Apr 22-23) Blessington Sailing Club
  • Ulsters (May 20-21) East Antrim Boat Club
  • Munsters (Jun 17-18) Tralee Bay Sailing Club
  • Leinsters (Jul 7-9) Dun Laoghaire Regatta
  • SOYC (Aug 19-20) Rush Sailing Club
  • Nationals (Sep 1-3) Sutton Dinghy Club
  • Hot Toddy (Sep 30-Oct 1) Royal North of Ireland Yacht Club

 

At A Glance – GP14 Dinghy Specifications

Crew 2
Draft 1,200 mm (47 in)
Hull weight 132.9 kg
LOA 4.27 m (14 ft)
Beam 1.54 m
Spinnaker area 8.4 m2
Upwind sail area 12.85 m2

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