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Displaying items by tag: Titanic Maritime Festival

#TitanicMaritime - Belfast City welcomes some of the Tall Ships back for the Titanic Maritime Festival a three day event (28-30 May) that begins today and includes this Spring Holiday Monday in the UK.

Groups of young people from across the city have been enjoying the challenge of life on the ocean waves, thanks to Belfast City Council’s Sail Training Initiative.

A total of 30 volunteers, aged between 16 and 28 and from all parts of the city, are taking part in series of voyages on board the tall ships Maybe and Morgenster. They were scheduled to call to ports such as Dublin, Liverpool, the Isle of Man, Derry/Londonderry, Galway, Cork, Oban, Carsaig on the Isle of Mull and Lamlash on the Isle of Arran.

Lord Mayor, Councillor Arder Carson, said: “These voyages will provide the participants with a unique, challenging and inspirational experience that increases their self-awareness and self-confidence, develops their teamwork and leadership skills and creates a strong sense of community responsibility, perhaps helping them to become future civic leaders. 

The Lord Mayor added “As members of trainee crews, along with trainees from Dublin, Galway and Liverpool they will be an important members of the crew and their participation in all activities is essential to the smooth running of the voyage.”

During the voyages, the trainees will help in all aspects of life on board, including trimming sails, steering and navigation.

The Belfast Titanic Maritime Festival and for further details, click here.

Published in Maritime Festivals

#TallShips - It's confirmed: Belfast will host the start of 2015's international Tall Ships Races.

According to BBC News, the tall ships will return to Belfast Lough for the first time since 2009 to coincide with next July's Titanic Maritime Festival.

The news follows more than two-and-a-half years from the original announcement by Belfast City Council, which has since secured sponsorship for its hosting of the event from German supermarket chain Lidl.

The tall-masted fleet's return to Irish shores will come three years after Dublin hosted the Tall Ships Races Festival.

BBC News has more on the story HERE.

Published in Tall Ships

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)