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Displaying items by tag: Track the Trainee Ship

#EmpireState – Training vessel Empire State VI is on its annual summer sea term, that is one of the requirements to earning a U.S. Coast Guard license.

The former cargoship now trains the cadets of the SUNY - State University of New York, which is to make a visit to Dublin Port next week having departed Norfolk, Virginia in early May.

As part of the program, cadets - either deck or engine license candidates - must accrue at least 180 days at sea before they graduate.

Time is earned during summer sea term journeys after freshman, sophomore and junior years.

Through the summer sea term, cadets travel around the world gaining vital hands-on experience in operating the 565ft steam-powered vessel and dealing with port traffic.

Cadets on board the ship will use the vessel as a floating lab during the school year.

The cruise itinerary changes every year to include ports around the U.S. East Coast and Europe.

This year the ship is scheduled to travel to Trieste, Italy; Mallorca and Barcelona, Spain; and Valletta, Malta before returning to campus in early August.

To follow the progress of the summer sea term by tracking the vessel here.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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.