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Displaying items by tag: Irish Offshore Sailing

The Sailing School entry 'Sherkin Irish Offshore Sailing' has retired from the SSE Renewables Round Ireland Race this evening with a 'mechanical issue'. 

Winds were strong northerlies around 25 knots at the time.

The Sunfast 37 yacht skippered by David Hanks is recorded by the race tracker as retired and has pulled into Kinsale in West Cork.

Published in Round Ireland

Irish Offshore Sailing has extended its sail training and yacht racing programmes for 2020 with a full range of motor cruising courses on a specially fitted-out and coded motor yacht.

Skippered by Yachtmaster Instructor Peter Beamish, the training boat is a Lochin 333 Harbour Pilot named Gaviota. Fitted with twin Perkins 300 HP engines, she has a cruising speed of 16 knots and a top speed of 24 knots.

Fully equipped with modern instruments and electronic engine controls, Gaviota is commercially coded in Ireland and the UK, and has all the safety equipment required for up to 10 people

Irish Offshore Sailing is now the only Irish Sailing and RYA recognised training centre in Ireland that can offer motor cruising courses which include Start Motor Cruising, Helmsman, Day Skipper, Advanced Pilotage, Coastal Skipper, and Yachtmaster Offshore Power.

See IrishOffshoreSailing.com for the full schedule of all motor cruising courses in 2020. And for more information please contact Peter Beamish on 087 672 9999.

Published in Sailing Schools

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).