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Displaying items by tag: Cruiseferry PontAven

#FerryNews – Brittany Ferries final Cork-Roscoff end of season sailing for 2013 took place on Saturday as the flagship cruiseferry Pont-Aven headed past Cork Harbour's Roches Point Lighthouse, writes Jehan Ashmore.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the Irish-French service began operations 35 years ago when Breton based operator Bretagne-Angleterre Irlande (B.A.I) otherwise known as Brittany Ferries introduced the small and sleek Armorique into service in 1978.

Over the decades the French ferry company has continued to grow the service with a range of stylish ferries.  The deck interiors exude a typical air of French flair and an extensive art collection of Breton scenes all adding to the holiday atmosphere.

Pont-Aven is a custom-built 41,748 tonnes cruiseferry that features luxury cabins with balconies and there's an indoor swimming pool, the only ferry to have this unique facility serving in Irish waters. The 2,400 passenger /650 cabin cruiseferry returns onto the Irish service in March 2014 on the shortest and fastest route linking the continent with a 14 hour sailing time.

Pont-Aven opens the season with a sailing from Roscoff on 14 March. The following morning she arrives in Cork (Ringaskiddy) ferryport to unload before resuming on her first round-trip leg to Roscoff with a sailing departing in the afternoon.

Published in Brittany Ferries

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.