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Displaying items by tag: Kesh River

Waterways Ireland advises masters of vessels and waterway users on the Erne System that dredging operations on the Kesh River in Co Fermanagh are continuing.

Dredging at the mouth of the Kesh River (West Section) has been completed as of this week, as previously reported on Afloat.ie.

Dredging on the two other river sections (Central and East) was scheduled to commence on Tuesday 29 August and will continue until Friday 22 September.

During this time the river will be closed to boating traffic from 8am to 6pm Mondays to Fridays, adds the cross-border body for Ireland’s inland waterways.

Published in Inland Waterways

Waterways Ireland advises masters of vessels on and users of the Erne System that dredging operations will commence on the Kesh River at Lower Lough Erne this Tuesday 18 July.

Dredging will occur at two locations along the Kesh River and at the mouth of the river in Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.

Dredging on the two river sections (Central and East) will continue for approximately two weeks until Wednesday 2 August. During this time the river will be closed to boating traffic from 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday.

Dredging will then commence at the mouth of the Kesh River (West Section) on Thursday 3 August and will continue for approximately three weeks until Friday 26 August 2023.

The navigation will be open during the dredging at the mouth of the river but boaters should expect delays, advises the cross-border body for Ireland’s inland waterways.

Published in Inland Waterways

Northern Ireland’s inland waters have seen a third fish kill in as many months after hundreds of dead trout were found in a Co Fermanagh river, as BBC News reports.

The grim discovery in the Kesh River on Wednesday (1 September) comes just days after the Three Mile Water in Co Antrim was struck by its second fish kill incident of this summer.

Ian Grimsley of Kesh and District Angling Club said the incident — which claimed not only brown trout and river trout but juvenile salmon, perch and more — was the worst of its kind he had witnessed in the area in 40 years.

And like last week’s fish kill in Newtownabbey, he fears “it’ll take years to bring it back again”.

The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) has launched an investigation, with the origin of the river pollutant as yet unknown. BBC News has more on the story HERE.

Published in Angling
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Ireland's Trading Ketch Ilen

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Designed by Limerick man Conor O’Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926, she was delivered by Munster men to the Falkland Islands where she served valiantly for seventy years, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.

Returned now to Ireland and given a new breath of life, Ilen may be described as the last of Ireland’s timber-built ocean-going sailing ships, yet at a mere 56ft, it is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

Wooden Sailing Ship Ilen FAQs

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

©Afloat 2020