Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: Flagship ferry refit

#FlagshipRefit - The Iargest ferry on the Irish Sea the 50,938 tonnes Ulysses completed a Dublin-Holyhead crossing before departing Anglesey in the early hours of yesterday morning bound for an annual refit in Falmouth, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The flagship of Irish Ferries made what is understood to have been a 20 hour passage including the Celtic Sea before entering a drydock at A&P Falmouth last night in Cornwall.

The Finnish built flagship dating from 2001 was under the Irish flag, however for the past decade the 209 metre long vessel transferred to the Cypriot flag. She is to undergo a routine maintenance prior to beginning her 15th year in service.

Ulysses can carry 1,875 passengers, 1,372 cars and 300 trucks and is the fifth largest ferry in tonnage terms operating in UK waters. All these large ferries operate on North Sea routes to the Netherlands.

Taking Ulysses place on the Dublin route is Isle of Inishmore which repositioned from Rosslare-Pembroke duties and which in turn are been covered by Oscar Wilde. The Rosslare-based French seasonal services cruiseferry having completed Christmas sailings to boost capacity on the Holyhead service.

At the Cornish shiprepairer, conversion and maintenance facility is also the landing ship dock RFA Lyme Bay (L3007), coastal products tanker Whit Navigator and Wavewalker 1.

The latter craft based in Falmouth, is Fugro Seacore’s award-winning eight legged ‘walking’ jack-up rig that carried out maintenance work last year at the Arklow Arklow Bank Offshore Windfarm.

Published in Ferry

Galway Port & Harbour

Galway Bay is a large bay on the west coast of Ireland, between County Galway in the province of Connacht to the north and the Burren in County Clare in the province of Munster to the south. Galway city and port is located on the northeast side of the bay. The bay is about 50 kilometres (31 miles) long and from 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) to 30 kilometres (19 miles) in breadth.

The Aran Islands are to the west across the entrance and there are numerous small islands within the bay.

Galway Port FAQs

Galway was founded in the 13th century by the de Burgo family, and became an important seaport with sailing ships bearing wine imports and exports of fish, hides and wool.

Not as old as previously thought. Galway bay was once a series of lagoons, known as Loch Lurgan, plied by people in log canoes. Ancient tree stumps exposed by storms in 2010 have been dated back about 7,500 years.

It is about 660,000 tonnes as it is a tidal port.

Capt Brian Sheridan, who succeeded his late father, Capt Frank Sheridan

The dock gates open approximately two hours before high water and close at high water subject to ship movements on each tide.

The typical ship sizes are in the region of 4,000 to 6,000 tonnes

Turbines for about 14 wind projects have been imported in recent years, but the tonnage of these cargoes is light. A European industry report calculates that each turbine generates €10 million in locally generated revenue during construction and logistics/transport.

Yes, Iceland has selected Galway as European landing location for international telecommunications cables. Farice, a company wholly owned by the Icelandic Government, currently owns and operates two submarine cables linking Iceland to Northern Europe.

It is "very much a live project", Harbourmaster Capt Sheridan says, and the Port of Galway board is "awaiting the outcome of a Bord Pleanála determination", he says.

90% of the scrap steel is exported to Spain with the balance being shipped to Portugal. Since the pandemic, scrap steel is shipped to the Liverpool where it is either transhipped to larger ships bound for China.

It might look like silage, but in fact, its bales domestic and municipal waste, exported to Denmark where the waste is incinerated, and the heat is used in district heating of homes and schools. It is called RDF or Refuse Derived Fuel and has been exported out of Galway since 2013.

The new ferry is arriving at Galway Bay onboard the cargo ship SVENJA. The vessel is currently on passage to Belem, Brazil before making her way across the Atlantic to Galway.

Two Volvo round world races have selected Galway for the prestigious yacht race route. Some 10,000 people welcomed the boats in during its first stopover in 2009, when a festival was marked by stunning weather. It was also selected for the race finish in 2012. The Volvo has changed its name and is now known as the "Ocean Race". Capt Sheridan says that once port expansion and the re-urbanisation of the docklands is complete, the port will welcome the "ocean race, Clipper race, Tall Ships race, Small Ships Regatta and maybe the America's Cup right into the city centre...".

The pandemic was the reason why Seafest did not go ahead in Cork in 2020. Galway will welcome Seafest back after it calls to Waterford and Limerick, thus having been to all the Port cities.

© Afloat 2020