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Displaying items by tag: Excursion boat

#Boatyard – The latest customer at Howth Boatyard, Co. Dublin is a 120 passenger excursion boat that operates cruises from the harbour to Ireland’s Eye just offshore and around Dublin Bay, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The boat St. Bridget operates for Dublin Bay Cruises had departed Grand Canal Dock Basin yesterday having taken a winter lay-up berth. Before the steel-hulled vessel headed for the boatyard for routine maintenance overhaul, St. Bridget berthed in the Dublin city centre. This is from where seasonal cruises offering panoramic views of the bay begin in April linking Howth and Dun Laoghaire harbours. 

St. Bridget has also over the years while off service in the winter taken a berth in Dun Laoghaire Harbour. This has been at the berth adjacent to where HSS Stena Explorer used alongside St. Micheals Wharf until the fastferry service to Holyhead, Wales closed operations in Autumn of 2014.

Since then Dun Laoghaire Harbour has been left with this sole passenger commercial service, albeit for domestic excursion purposes. In addition the former Aran Islands serving 25m long ferry also offers evening cruises to Killiney Bay.

Another vessel of a similar length at Howth Boatyard last week was a UK flagged highspeed craft crew transfer boat, MSC Kraver. The 167 gross tonnage craft had sailed from Birkenhead.

Earlier this month, Wicklow based tug workboat Husky had too availed of the yard’s 600 tonnes ‘Syncrolift’ facility. This sees boats raised out of the water and taken across to the boatyard set back from the quayside on the West Pier.

Published in Dublin Bay
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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.