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Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Seaplane

Lough Erne Yacht Club on the Lower Lough is situated about six miles north of Enniskillen on Goblusk Bay and occupies a former WW2 RAF site built in 1941 for Catalina Flying Boats. It has the enviable facility of being able to use the former slipway, moorings and hangar for members' sailing boats, power boats and caravans. The hangar provides unique winter storage for boats of all sizes.

Seaplane on Lough Erne

The history surrounding the Sunderlands and Catalinas stationed at Castle Archdale on Lough Erne and particularly the tenders which serviced them during the war is understood to be part of BBC 1 NI Newsline at 1810 hrs tonight (2nd).

In a post on the BBC NI App Louise Cullen writes about two Fermanagh men who have made models of the seaplane tenders; Seamus Gormley, a retired builder and Fred Ternan of Lough Erne Heritage. She also talks to one of the last pilots of the tenders, Alan Henson who was stationed at Castle Archdale in the mid Fifties.

Published in Inland Waterways
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#Seaplane - Almost 80 years after Charles Lindbergh considered the idea of a seaplane base in Galway Harbour, a Clare-based company has held its first test flight out of the city for a proposed new seaplane service, as RTÉ News reports.

The Cessna 206 was flown to and from the harbour yesterday (5 September) by Mountshannon-based Harbour Flights, which hopes to establish a permanent pontoon in the docks to run scenic excursions around Lough Derg and further along the west coast region next year.

It's also hoped that the tourist flights would pave the way for an Aran Islands commuter service, and an eventual Galway to Dublin route.

The plans come three years after Ireland's first ever commercial seaplane service ran its first test flights out of Cork Harbour.

RTÉ News has more on the story HERE.

Published in Galway Harbour
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A test flight for Ireland's first seaplane service took place in Cork Harbour on Friday afternoon. Harbour Flights Ireland has applied for planning permission to set up a landing base in Cobh to run its service having already acquired flight rights at Mountshannon, Co Clare. Test flights ran on Harbour Flights' four-seater plane. The Irish Times has a full report HERE. The company website is HERE.
Published in Cork Harbour

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.