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Displaying items by tag: Lidar

Marine Notices No 37 of 2021 and No 44 of 2021 advised of the deployment of two wave buoys and one floating LiDAR buoy at the Dublin Array offshore wind farm on the Bray and Kish Banks.

The two wave buoys were recovered from site in June 2022. Now the Department of Transport has now been advised by Partrac Ltd that the floating LiDAR buoy on Bray Bank is scheduled to be recovered in the period between Thursday 5 and Thursday 19 January 2023, subject to weather and operational constraints.

The floating LiDAR buoy at Latitude 53° 10.645’ N, Longitude 005° 55.785' W has a square footprint with an area of 4 sqm and height of around 4m above the water line. It is yellow in colour and has a St Andrew cross on top.

It also contains a yellow light which emits five flashes every 20 seconds and is visible for up to three nautical miles.

The vessel CT Barnston (callsign MUZU5) will recover the buoy and tow it back to Wicklow Harbour for demobilisation. Dublin Port will be contacted in advance regarding the operations with estimated timings. The buoy will be towed some 30m astern of the CT Branston at a maximum speed of 3.5 knots.

During recovery of the floating LiDAR buoy on Bray Bank, the vessel will be restricted in its ability to manoeuvre. All other vessels are requested to leave a wide berth during the recovery and towing operations. Radio transmissions will be conducted with VTS and other seafarers to notify them of the buoy operations.

Contact details can be found in Marine Notice No 85 of 2022, attached below.

Published in Power From the Sea

More works are scheduled for the Codling Wind Park project, with the deployment of two lidar buoys to characterise the wind park area from this week.

Weather permitting, the Voe Vanguard (callsign MBEN9) will deploy the buoys in the Irish Sea off Co Wicklow between tomorrow, Tuesday 27 April and Friday 14 May.

Deployment operations will be conducted on a 12-hour basis. The Voe Vanguard will be restricted in ability to manoeuvre, so all vessels operating within its work area are requested to keep their distance, maintaining a safety zone around the survey vessel and pass at minimum speed to reduce vessel wash.

Throughout survey operations, the Voe Vanguard will be displaying appropriate lights and shapes. The lantern on the buoys will give out five yellow flashes every 20 seconds, visible for up to three nautical miles.

Further details including the relevant coordinates are included in Marine Notice No 29 of 2021, which is available to download below.

The latest notice follows previous advisories for geophysical surveys and geotechnical surveys over the next number of weeks for the wind farm scheme at the Codling Bank.

Published in Coastal Notes

Ireland's Trading Ketch Ilen

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Designed by Limerick man Conor O’Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926, she was delivered by Munster men to the Falkland Islands where she served valiantly for seventy years, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.

Returned now to Ireland and given a new breath of life, Ilen may be described as the last of Ireland’s timber-built ocean-going sailing ships, yet at a mere 56ft, it is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

Wooden Sailing Ship Ilen FAQs

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

©Afloat 2020