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Displaying items by tag: Catalina Flying Boat

#FarewellEMER - Today the sell-listed L.E. Emer (P21) departed Dublin Port for the final time and it was also the Naval Service OPV's last patrol, writes Jehan Ashmore.

She headed out of Dublin Bay under the command of Lt .Cdr. Alan O'Regan and where she set a southerly course to pass the Muglins off Dalkey Island.

At the same time of her late morning exodus of the bay, a former World War II serving Catalina flying-boat soared above. The distinctive aircraft was heading eastwards over the Irish Sea, having taken part in yesterday's Flight Fest hosted in the capital.

L.E.Emer is scheduled to complete her patrol duties next Friday at the Naval Base in Haulbowline, Cork Harbour.

She will be decommissioned and next month put up for public auction unless previously sold.  A pair of replacement OPV newbuilds are under contruction in the UK with the first of the improved 'Roisin' class due for delivery next year.

Published in Navy

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.