Displaying items by tag: Helsinki

3rd July 2016

10th Place For Howth's Kissane At Helsinki Women's Match

#MatchRacing - Howth Yacht Club's Diana Kissane and crew finished 10th in the first round of the Women's International Match Racing Series in Helsinki on Friday (1 July).

Kissane and crew Lizzy McDowell (Malahide YC), Isabella Morehead (Cork), Ellen Cahill (Mayo) won three of their 11 round-robin contests but it wasn't enough to take them through to the quarter-final knockout stage at the NJK Sailing Center, where the Swedish boat skippered by Anna Östling beat France's Pauline Courtois and crew in two straight races in the final.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the same venue in the Finnish capital is set to host the Women's Match Racing World Championship in 2017.

Published in Match Racing

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LE Roisin On Goodwill Visit to Tallinn

Following L.É. Róisín's (P51) visit to St. Petersburg, the Naval Service's OPV is on a three-day stopover in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, writes Jehan Ashmore.

She docked early this morning in the Old City Harbour and was expected to be open to the public over the weekend. L.É. Róisín has also called to the Finnish capital of Helsinki. On Wednesday she will call to Estonia's neighbour Latvia where medical supplies will be delivered in the port of Riga to be transported for the Chernobyl Children's Project in Belarus.

Her visit is part of trade-mission deployment organised by the Irish Government agencies to strengthen economic, cultural and social ties with the Russian Federation and Baltic States.The goodwill visit is not the first undertaken by the Naval Service in this region as the flagship L.É. Éithne also docked in St. Petersburg and the capital of Latvia in June 2003.

Published in Navy

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Bilbao Returns to Baltic Sea 'Roots'

St. Peter Line has agreed to purchase the Pride of Bilbao for €37.7m from Irish Continental Group (ICG) which has been on charter to P&O's UK-Spain route, writes Jehan Ashmore.

ICG will charter the 37,583 gross tonnes cruiseferry to St. Peter Line on a hire-purchase basis with instalments to be paid over six years, with the final payment and transfer of vessel ownership in 2016. The vessel is to undergo refurbishment and renamed Princess Anastasia before opening a new second route for St.Peter Line between St. Petersburg and Stockholm in April 2011. The new twice weekly service will call via Tallinn, Estonia and will for the first time provide visa-free cruises from Sweden to the Russian Federation.

For the last 17 years the Pride of Bilbao has operated between Portsmouth and Bilbao under charter to P&O. Built in 1986, she was launched as Olympia for Viking Line between Stockholm and Helsinki, then the Baltic Sea ferry was one of the largest overnight passenger capacity ferries in the world. At 177 metres long the vessel can accommodate 2552-passengers, 600-vehicles and space for 77-trucks. She has a sister, the Mariella, which currently operates on Viking Line's Stockholm-Mariehamn–Helsinki service.

In 1993 the vessel was renamed Pride of Bilbao and launched a new service on the Bay of Biscay, under charter from her Scandinavian owners. The following year ICG purchased the Pride of Bilbao from Viking Line and she was re-registered to the Bahamas. The vessel was subsequently entered into a British bare-boat charter arrangement between P&O Ferries and ICG. Due to unsustainable losses the route closed on 28 September this year but rivals Brittany Ferries soon shortly announced they would reopen the route in Spring 2011.

Throughout the Pride of Bilbao's career under ICG (parent company of Irish Ferries), the cruiseferry has only once visited Ireland. In between Spanish sailings, she was sub-chartered for a three-day Christmas mini-cruise from Portsmouth to Dublin in 2004, where the Pride of Bilbao berthed at the ferryport close to the ICG headquarters.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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About the Star Sailors League Gold Cup

In 2022, Sailing finally got its own World Cup, according to the promoters of the SSL (STAR SAILORS LEAGUE) Gold Cup.

Like football in 1930 and rugby in 1987, the SSL Gold Cup is designed to crown the best sailing nation of all! The World's Top 56 countries, selected on their SSL Nation ranking, will battle their way through to raise the coveted and only Sailing World Cup trophy.

The SSL is the global inshore sailing circuit launched by Olympic athletes in 2012, by sailors for sailors. Its main philosophy considers the athletes (not the boats) as the “Stars” and it aims to showcase the annual global sailing championship with its over 15’000 regattas; it determines and celebrates the world leaders in sailing promoting the inshore regattas to the global audience.

The three main components of the SSL Circuit are the SSL Ranking published every Tuesday, updating the position of over 100,000 leading athletes, thus highlighting the world’s top inshore sailors. The SSL Finals taking place every year around November-December, it’s the annual final of the SSL Circuit among the 20/25 best athletes of the ranking, to crown the champion of the season. And the SSL Gold Cup, the ‘ultimate’ championship of the circuit with 56 nations among World Sailing members, to crown the best sailing nation.

In a mechanical sport where the race for technology sometimes gets in the way of the race for glory, the SSL aims for equal competition where the talent of the sailors is at the forefront and the champions become heroes that inspire new generations of sailors.

The SSL is a World Sailing Special Event since 2017.