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Displaying items by tag: Wetsuits

CH Marine has the latest stylishly cool Typhoon wetsuits and shorties from the budget-friendly Swarm range, designed with the novice in mind.

Choosing Swarm is the way to go if you are new to the sport or just get on the water occasionally. And the new Swarm3 wetsuits are available in adult, child and infant sizes to kit out the whole family.

See the full range of Typhoon wetsuits available on CHMarine.ie

Published in CH Marine Chandlery
Tagged under

Old wetsuits aren’t recyclable, with thousands dumped in Irish landfills each year — but as RTÉ News reports, one woman has found a way to ‘upcycle’ them into something new.

Lynn Haughton, a designer based in Co Wexford, has been repurposing the durable neoprene fabric wetsuits are made of into a variety of accessories such as bags and pencil cases.

And what’s more, a tenth of the profits from Haughton’s Neo Collection goes to the aid of local marine wildlife charity Seal Rescue Ireland.

For other recent efforts at upcycling marine-related materials, see the outstanding work of two Cork schoolgirls entering this year’s Junk Kouture contest.

Published in News Update
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#SillySeason - If you've been around either of Dublin's canals in the past couple of weeks, you may have seen some excited groups of young people gathered around the locks clad in wetsuits and launching themselves into the water.

The Irish Times has a video report on this latest trend that some city kids are making into a summertime sport - made possible thanks to the ready availability of inexpensive wetsuits from the likes of Aldi and Lidl.

As that paper's Ronan McGreevy writes: "They serve a dual purpose: keeping out the cold of the icy canals and helping to protect against the bugs that inevitably arise in an urban waterway."

Meanwhile, across the border some bathers have been taking things to the other extreme - as the Irish Mirror reports on two men arrested for skinny dipping in Belfast Lough.

The daring duo were reported by officers from Holywood PSNI for indecent exposure and, according to the Belfast Telegraph, they could even face inclusion on the sex offenders' register for their antics.

Published in News Update
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About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).