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Displaying items by tag: Life Rafts

The Department of Transport has issued a safety notice to advise all users of Deutsche Schlauchboot GmbH (DSB) life rafts of important information regarding the equipment.

In June 2022, the UK-registered stern trawler Piedras (FD 528) flooded while fishing 78 nautical miles south-west of Mizen Head, Co Cork.

The United Kingdom’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch has issued a Safety Bulletin following an inspection of the life raft that was used by the crew to abandon ship during this incident.

The inspection found that the life raft had not been correctly serviced since its manufacture by DSB in March 2007, despite having been routinely certified by the service station Comfer Marin SL, Marin, Spain.

Therefore, owners and operators of DSB life rafts serviced by Comfer Marin SL, Spain, between January 2017 and June 2022 are advised to contact their nearest approved Survitec life raft service station without delay to arrange for their life rafts to be reinspected and serviced to ensure that they are in working order and comply with all statutory requirements.

Details of Survitec life raft service stations can be found HERE.

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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.