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Displaying items by tag: Scottish round timber

#Detained- A cargoship from Scotland that was detained in Wicklow Port for a more than a week including St. Patrick's Day, finally departed last night bound for Belfast, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The 674 tonnes Burhou I was detained by Port State Control at Wicklow Port, having discharged a cargo of round timber from Kyle of Lochalsh in western Scotland. This is a regular trade to the port as featured previously on Afloat.

Burhou I is a Belize flagged small coaster which was detained following an inspection by authorities. The detention surrounded a single technical deficiency to resolve, before the ship departed yesterday in the early evening.

The detention of the 58m long Burhou I involved having to shift berths within Wicklow Harbour. This led to the cargoship berthing alongside the non-commercial East Pier.

It is from this vantage point where spectators gather to watch the Round Ireland Yacht Race hosted by the nearby Wicklow Sailing Club located at the foot of the pier.

The veteran cargsoship built by a German yard in 1978 is a sister of Isis (see, visit to Ramsey, Isle of Man). Both coasters have self-loading and discharging capabilities to transport a variety of cargoes among them timber felled in Scotland. 

These coasters regularly trade throughout the Irish Sea and also to ports in south-west England. In addition they provide a domestic freight service to the smaller harbours in the Scottish Outer Isles.

Also in the port during the week was the 82m long Nestor. This was only the second call to the port of the 2,452 tonnes cargoship that loaded scrap metal in recent days and departed for Liverpool.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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).