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Due to the Coronavirus pandemic and following advice given by governments in all countries in which Brittany Ferries operate the company have been forced to temporarily suspend passenger services connecting the UK, Ireland, France and Spain.

All passenger sailings between the UK and France, Ireland and France and Ireland-Spain have 'ceased' operating for the time-being. The operator apologise sincerely to all those affected.

As Afloat previously reported, the final 'passenger' ferry service on the Ireland-Spain route involved an inward sailing to Rosslare Europort on Monday in advance of this latest all route network development.

For further information on Covid-19, travel advice updates from Governments consult Brittany Ferries 'Irish' website, click HERE In addition for future reference sailing updates HERE.

As for the final passenger repatriation service leaving Spain for the UK which takes place this weekend is full.

A small number of ships in the fleet will continue to operate with limited crew as a lifeline freight-only service. During this period of uncertainty the operator must and will do all they can to ensure that essential goods continue to flow freely.

In a message from Christophe Mathieu, CEO of Brittany Ferries he said that the actions have been taken in the best interests of passengers and colleagues. Our priority, of course, is the safety and well-being of passengers, crew, shore-side staff, suppliers, as well as the communities we serve across four countries.

The CEO added our teams have been working hard to answer calls, but due to the exceptionally high level of affected bookings we now have to close our phone lines and divert all resource to contacting passengers proactively over the coming days. If you have a booking with us over the coming days and haven’t heard from us, please bear with us. For urgent enquiries, you can still contact us via a web form on our website.

For amendments to sailings from mid-April onwards, (again using Irish website HERE) please use the online ‘manage my booking’ facility. We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause and we hope to return to normal service as soon as we can.

We know that everyone is doing the best they can during this ever-changing and unprecedented situation. And that’s what we are trying to do too.

Published in Brittany Ferries

The Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) Information

The creation of the Irish Cruiser Racing Association (ICRA) began in a very low key way in the autumn of 2002 with an exploratory meeting between Denis Kiely, Jim Donegan and Fintan Cairns in the Granville Hotel in Waterford, and the first conference was held in February 2003 in Kilkenny.

While numbers of cruiser-racers were large, their specific locations were widespread, but there was simply no denying the numerical strength and majority power of the Cork-Dublin axis. To get what was then a very novel concept up and running, this strength of numbers had to be acknowledged, and the first National Championship in 2003 reflected this, as it was staged in Howth.

ICRA was run by a dedicated group of volunteers each of whom brought their special talents to the organisation. Jim Donegan, the elder statesman, was so much more interested in the wellbeing of the new organisation than in personal advancement that he insisted on Fintan Cairns being the first Commodore, while the distinguished Cork sailor was more than content to be Vice Commodore.

ICRA National Championships

Initially, the highlight of the ICRA season was the National Championship, which is essentially self-limiting, as it is restricted to boats which have or would be eligible for an IRC Rating. Boats not actually rated but eligible were catered for by ICRA’s ace number-cruncher Denis Kiely, who took Ireland’s long-established native rating system ECHO to new heights, thereby providing for extra entries which brought fleet numbers at most annual national championships to comfortably above the hundred mark, particularly at the height of the boom years. 

ICRA Boat of the Year (Winners 2004-2019)