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Amongst the festival tallships lining Waterford quays, the RV Keary, a marine research survey vessel that mapped the estuary in advance of the tall ships arrival, will too be open to the public, writes Jehan Ashmore.
Work to map the navigational channel of Waterford Harbour's estuary was completed last month by the catamaran hulled craft that belongs to the Geological Survey of Ireland (GSI). Her smaller fleetmate the 7.5m RIB RV Geo carried-out work in the shallower areas along the river banks. For images of the seabed survey click HERE. The survey which had started in April was a joint research programme between (GSI) and the Marine Institute (MI).

This was the RV Keary's first INFOMAR survey leg of 2011 and it was also the first time that both vessels have worked in tandem. The mapping of the estuary was from an area just west of the city's Rice Bridge to the open sea at the mouth of Waterford Harbour.

The estuary was mapped before in 2007 using the Marine Institutes larger vessel the RV Celtic Voyager, which covered the harbour approaches from the 10m contour to greater depth offshore. Both RV Keary and RV Geo overlapped their coverage with this previous data, producing a comprehensive and seamless seabed map of the area.

RV Keary is constructed of marine grade aluminium and was custom built in 2008 for the (GSI) by Veecraft Marine of Capetown, South Africa.
The 15m craft with a draft of just 2m is equipped with an extensive range of highly sophisticated technology. She has an open working area at the aft-deck to conduct operations and is licensed to carry up to 12 personnel. For further vessel characteristics click HERE.

The 34-tonne craft made her 7,000 mile delivery voyage from the African continent to Europe. She was firstly transported on the deck of a cargoship to Rotterdam. After unloading at the Dutch port the 22-knot capable craft set off with several calls along the UK south coast to include loading bunkers before finally reaching Dun Laoghaire, from where she entered service in April 2009.

Published in Marine Science

Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.