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Displaying items by tag: Conor fogety

The Royal Western Yacht Club of England has announced the rescheduling of its OSTAR TWOSTAR that was postponed in 2020 due to the COVID 19 virus, to a new date of May 9th 2021.

The 2021 race will continue to run between Plymouth England and Newport Rhode Island as before.

Ireland has previous success in the OSTAR Race through the pioneering efforts of Cork Harbour solo sailor Barry Hurley who took a class win in 2009 and more recently with Howth Yacht Club's Conor Fogerty who raced to success in 2017.

A new 2021 Notice of Race, Entry form and World Sailing 2020 - 2021 Offshore Safety Regulations for Cat 1 yachts can all be downloaded from the event website.

Published in Solo Sailing

Conor Fogerty has had a great first 48 hours in his 21–day transatlantic Ostar race. His Jeanneau Sunfast 3600 BAM made a significant play yesterday by heading North to the Irish coast and this has paid off in the short term.

The Open 50 'Vento' was late making this decision and had to turn some sharp corners and consequently lost approx 10 miles to BAM.

The other 3600 'Mister Lucky seems to have adopted a more southerly route and this represents the first large tactical long term split. So, what of the long term? The low out in the Atlantic has moved further North - too far to go over the top of it so this means that there could be significant upwind work which will make it a very tough race. Later today should see winds increase to 20-25 knots, pushing BAM back on to white sails.

Published in Solo Sailing
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About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).