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A rare naval visitor to Dublin Port is to be made from that of the Russian Navy when the anti-submarine destroyer Admiral Chabaneko (650) is to dock next weekend, writes Jehan Ashmore.
Measuring 8,950 tons full load displacement and 163m/ 534ft long, she was the first of only two Udaloy-II class built to serve the KGB Maritime Border Guard. She can achieve around 30 knots and as a destroyer is heavily equipped with missiles, torpedoes, guns and the ability to carry helicopters.

Admiral Chabaneko was built by Yantar Zavod in Kaliningrad, and her sister Admiral Basisty though she was cancelled and scrapped in 1994. In 1996 Admiral Chabaneko was transferred to the Russian Navy but was not commissioned until two years later. In 1999 she changed naval base from Baltysk to Severomorsk to take up service in the Northern Fleet.

The last such call by the Russian Navy to Dublin was by her half-sister, Severomorsk, one of over a dozen of the original Udaloy-I class destroyers built, which made a three-day visit to the capital in 2009.

Severomorsk had arrived from Cherbourg after completing in FRUKUS 2009, an international naval anti-piracy exercise in the North Atlantic. The five-day exercise was held off the Brest and included a Tourville class frigate from the French navy, the UK's HMS York and USS Klaking.

Published in Navy

William M Nixon has been writing about sailing in Ireland and internationally for many years, with his work appearing in leading sailing publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He has been a regular sailing columnist for four decades with national newspapers in Dublin, and has had several sailing books published in Ireland, the UK, and the US. An active sailor, he has owned a number of boats ranging from a Mirror dinghy to a Contessa 35 cruiser-racer, and has been directly involved in building and campaigning two offshore racers. His cruising experience ranges from Iceland to Spain as well as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, and he has raced three times in both the Fastnet and Round Ireland Races, in addition to sailing on two round Ireland records. A member for ten years of the Council of the Irish Yachting Association (now the Irish Sailing Association), he has been writing for, and at times editing, Ireland's national sailing magazine since its earliest version more than forty years ago