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Displaying items by tag: Trade Call

#HollandVisit- A Royal Netherlands Navy ship is to visit Cork City for crew rest and recreation in addition to promoting Dutch trade and business interests in the Munster region, writes Jehan Ashmore.

HNLMS Holland the leadship of its namesake class of around 3,750 tons full displacement is to enter Cork Harbour today. The Offshore Patrol Vessel is to berth at North Custom House Quay in the Cork City and remain until Tuesday.

Among the Dutch firms attending the trade events, is the engineering company Royal HaskoningDHV which has been appointed by Irish Water to the Dublin Ringsend Wastewater Treatment Plant project team. Royal Haskoning are to provide expertise on its sustainable wastewater reduction treatment technology.

As for the HNLMS Holland, she shares the same shipbuilder of the ILV Granuaile, the Commissioner of Irish Lights aids to navigation tender that was launched at Damen Shipyards Galați in Romania. Both vessels were also fitted-out at the Dutch group’s facilities back in the Netherlands.

The Holland class are designed to fulfill patrol and intervention tasks against lightly armed opponents, such as pirates and smugglers, noting the Dutch overseas territories in the Caribbean.

At the same time they are equipped to cope with much higher level electronic and radar surveillance capabilities used for military stabilization and security roles, short of outright war.

A surveillance system, Thales is integrated into the mast which integrates communication systems and where there are two 4-faced phased arrays for air and surface search.

At the stern are aviation facilities of a fully equipped hangar and flight deck for one medium-sized helicopter.

Published in Naval Visits

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)