#CorkHarbour - Afloat focuses on a rare breed, an Irish shipowner whose cargoship recently underwent routine dry-docking in Cork followed by a passage to Scotland this weekend, writes Jehan Ashmore.
The Midleton, Co. Cork based shipowner, Coast Lines Shipping, with three decades in service, specialises in transporting timber forestry products. The operator's 1,713 gross tonnage general cargoship Ayress has undergone routine works in Cork Dockyard to enable the 79m cargoship to continue trading the Irish Sea and beyond. Other service cargoes carried are coal, fertiliser, salt and stone.
Over the years, Coast Lines has experience in operating single and tween-deck vessels in addition to container ships. As for Ayress, earlier this month the green-hulled cargoship built in 1979 (formerly Anette and beforehand Antares), called to Cork Dockyard, part of the Doyle Shipping Group (DSG).
The shiprepair and marine engineering facility in Rushbrooke (near Cobh) is the Republic's only remaining large dry-dock suitable for commercial ships following the closure of the Dublin facility last year.
Ayress remained in the dry-dock up to Friday (of last week), before shifting on to the nearby quay for further works to be completed at the facility. Then the cargoship made the short hop on Saturday across the neck of Cork Harbour to Passage West, where a private quay is also operated by DSG.
At this quay, cranes loaded the hold of Ayress with 1,200 tonnes of wood-chips, the by-product of timber by the way was returning to Scotland from where originally sourced.
On Wednesday, the Dominican flagged cargoship departed Cork Harbour bound for Clydebank, downriver of Glasgow city centre. The passage up the Irish Sea was completed this Friday with the ship berthing in Rothesay Dock. Located in between this dock and the city, is the Riverside Museum: Scotland's Museum of Transportation and Travel where Afloat made a visit in recent years.
On the superstucture, Ayress displays the symbol and words 'TimberLink', a transport initiative of the Forest Commission Scotland, which through ABP (see below) charters the ship from Coast Lines and to operators that transport timber by sea across the Firth of Clyde and along the west coast of Scotland. The Commission claim that sea-transportation removes nearly 1 million lorry miles each year from the Scottish road network.
The TimberLink service is contracted to Associated British Ports (ABP), which ships up to 100,000 tonnes of timber a year from the Argyll ports of Ardrishaig, Campeltown and Sandbank. In addition, timber operations involve wood processing plants in Ayrshire among them Glennon's Sawmill, Troon, where Ayress as Afloat previously reported had departed from to Wicklow in March.
On that occasion, following the beastly weather conditions in Scotland, Ayress along with rival timber-traders cleared a back-log of round timber that was discharged in Wicklow Port.
Short-sea traders like Ayress are regular callers to south-west Scotland where the Galloway Forest Park is located. This is the UK's largest afforested area (400 sq miles) which features in a new BBC 2 six-part series 'The Forest' on Saturday's.
The series follows those who live and work in the place known as Scotland's 'Highlands in the Lowlands', where the billion pound tree-felling industry produces 600,000 tonnes of timber annually, mainly for building and construction.
The Irish construction sector among others is a customer of timber products that are regularly imported from Scotland to Wickow Port. In addition other operators call to the east coast port with Scandinavian sawn packaged timber. The packaged bundles can be seen stored along the warehouses of the Murrough, north of the regional port.
