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Displaying items by tag: Bennet Bank

The Commissioners of Irish Lights are seeking feedback from users on the visual and radar detection performance of new buoys in varying states of weather and sea state on the Irish East Coast. 

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the 'Spar' buoys performance comparison trials will commence on the Bennet Bank and West Blackwater stations. The trial is to determine the visible and radar conspicuity performance of the spar structures in comparison to the profile of the existing conventionally shaped buoys. The full notice to mariners is available to download below as a pdf file. 

Spar type buoys of the same light and daymark display as the existing buoys will be established in close proximity to the Bennet Bank and West Blackwater stations. The Spar Buoys will be positioned 300 metres to the north of the Bennet Bank Buoy and 300 metres to the east of the West Blackwater Buoy. 

Mariners are advised to maintain a safe distance from these buoys during the trial period which is expected to last approximately twelve months.

Observation forms are available on the CIL website here and completed forms can be returned by email to the Trial Assessment Team at [email protected]

Radio Navigation Warnings will be issued when the trial commences.

Published in Lighthouses

New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup

Ireland has a proud history in New York Yacht Club’s biennial Invitational Cup, with Irish participation from the very start and a podium result in 2019.

In 2009, two Irish Clubs,  Royal St. George in Dun Laoghaire and Royal Cork in Crosshaven, entered into New York's newest sailing competition that was reminiscent of Newport’s America’s Cup days when 19 yacht club teams from 14 nations descended on this “City by the Sea”.

The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is a competition between yacht clubs, with strict eligibility rules ensuring that each team is comprised exclusively of amateur sailors.

The competition, which was first run in 2009, has drawn entries from 49 clubs from 22 nations on all six inhabited continents.

The New York Yacht Club won the inaugural event in 2009, with the Royal Canadian Yacht Club winning in 2011 and 2013, England's Royal Thames Yacht Club winning in 2015 and Southern Yacht Club from New Orleans winning in 2017.

In 2019 the regatta was sailed for the first time in the New York Yacht Club’s fleet of IC37 yachts, and Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, from Australia, became the first Southern Hemisphere club to win the trophy. And it was in this edition that Anthony O’Leary’s Royal Cork team took the bronze medal.