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Displaying items by tag: Drifting containership

#DriftingCargoship – A drifting cargoship on the way from Rotterdam to Ireland has been rescued off Plymouth by the RNLI, coastguard and a Dutch tug.

The Plymouth Herald writes that the 130m ship suffered engine failure and began dragging anchor off the south coast of Cornwall.

The Samskip Express was drifting three miles off Porthleven but, according to coastguards (on Friday), is now anchored awaiting rescue. It is said to be steady in 35 knot winds and a four metre swell.

A spokeswoman for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) said a tug had been sent to the ship and Penlee lifeboat summoned to assist getting a line to the vessel. For more coverage, click here.

In an update, Afloat adds that engine problems with Samskip Express have since been resolved and that the 803 TEU capacity containership was able to continue her voyage from Rotterdam. Last night the vessel berthed in Dublin Port.

The 2006 built containership operated by Samskip based in the Netherlands, though originally an Icelandic company formed in 1990, operate the vessel on a routine ‘feeder’ liner service to Dublin.

Samskip Express is scheduled to make her next departure around noon today bound for Waterford (Belview) the port's main terminal located downriver of the city. Also they operate services between Rotterdam to Belfast and Cork.

Samskip’s Dutch-Irish services form only part of a much wider route network throughout Europe, to northern Russian ports and on the Black Sea and to Georgia. In addition Europe-USA routes to ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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.