Displaying items by tag: Escape Barge

17th January 2017

How to Make Your Tourist Attraction Stand Out? Build An 'Escape Room' In a Boat

Zorg Ella – a 21 metre barge originally used to transport potatoes in eastern Netherlands was transported by ship to Dublin Port as seen lowered into the water

#EscapeRoom - The ‘escape room’ business initially an Asian craze has arrived in Ireland and appears to be booming at the moment.

The latest addition to the sector was launched in Dublin yesterday afternoon – and its backers are hoping to stand out from their competitors by offering something a little different: Ireland’s first ‘escape boat’.

“We’ve done a lot of research on escape rooms,” Ronan Brady of escapeboats.ie told TheJournal.ie at Dublin Port as he watched the soon-to-be-refitted Zorg Ella barge being lowered into the Liffey.

I’ve travelled around Europe doing a lot of them and we’ve done all the ones in Dublin – and we think there’s room for huge improvement.

Brady, who has teamed up with Irish Ship and Barge Fabrication for the new venture, hopes to have the attraction up and running on Grand Canal Quay, near the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, by spring.

They’ve spent months sourcing props for the 101-year old ship and thinking of ideas for the different rooms on board, he said.

To read more on this new craze, click here.

Published in News Update

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Esailing & Virtual Sailing information

The concept of e-sailing, or virtual sailing, is based on a computer game sailing challenge that has been around for more than a decade.

The research and development of software over this time means its popularity has taken off to the extent that it has now become a part of the sailing seascape and now allows people to take an 'active part' in some of the most famous regattas across the world such as the Vendée Globe, Route du Rhum, Sydney Hobart, Volvo Ocean Race, America’s Cup and some Olympic venues too, all from the comfort of their armchair.

The most popular model is the 'eSailing World Championship'. It is an annual esports competition, first held in 2018 and officially recognised by World Sailing, the sports governing body.

The eSailing World Championship is a yearly competition for virtual sailors competing on the Virtual Regatta Inshore game.

The contract to run the event was given to a private company, Virtual Regatta that had amassed tens of thousands of sailors playing offshore sailing routing game following major offshore races in real-time.

In April 2020, the company says on its website that it has 35,000 active players and 500,000 regattas sailed.

Virtual Regatta started in 2010 as a small team of passionate designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs gathered around the idea that virtual sailing sports games can mix with real races and real skippers.