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Displaying items by tag: Save Our Ferry

#islandnews - The Kerryman writes that the ferry service to Valentia Island is a vital asset to all south-west of the county and should be given the financial support it needs to continue into the future.

That was the view of Councillor Norma Moriarty at last week's meeting of the South and West Kerry Municipal District following a deputation by Valentia Island Ferries Limited.

The deputation spokesperson Muiris O'Donoghue explained that, through its own money and borrowings, the group currently has €1million of the €2.8million it needs for a new boat it has designed. While its current boat - a 1963-built craft that has operated every March to October in south Kerry since 1996 - is in good shape according to Mr O'Donoghue, the Marine Survey Office has said that the boat will have to be replaced in 2018.

The group has not secured funding from the Fáilte Ireland Capital Programme for larger project, and says it has done all it can to raise funds through its own initiative. An emergency meeting will take place in the coming weeks between Ministers Heather Humphreys, Michael Ring and Shane Ross to discuss approaches to securing the ferry's future.

Deputy Michael Healy Rae said no date is in place but that Minister Ross "wants it arranged as soon as possible".

For more from the local newspaper, click here.

Published in Island News

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.