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Displaying items by tag: ardglass marina

#RNLI - Newcastle RNLI volunteer crews were woken by their pagers at 3.34am yesterday morning (Wednesday 26 July) after a lone yachtsman ran aground at the mouth of Ardglass Marina in Co Down.

The all-weather lifeboat Eleanor and Bryant Girling was on the way by 3.55am and arrived on scene with the casualty vessel 45 minutes later. 

The lifeboat crew found the yacht hard aground and listing heavily to starboard on the breakwater protecting the marina. 

Under command of coxswain William Chambers, the RNLI crew tried manoeuvring their lifeboat close to the yacht only to find the tide had fallen too much and was too far away to retrieve the lone sailor from his vessel.

With full co-ordination between the RNLI and Newcastle Coastguard on the shore, the lifeboat pulled back to deeper water and provided safety cover while members of the coastguard team carried out a rescue from the shore.

The casualty was removed from the vessel for his own safety with no injuries, and with everyone accounted for the lifeboat was stood down.

Published in RNLI Lifeboats

Ardglass Marina (also known as Phennick cove marina) is situated just south of Strangford, Ardglass has the capacity to accomodate up to 33 yachts as well as space for small craft. Despite being relatively small in size, the marina boasts an extensive array of facilities, either on site or close at hand. Most of the necessary shops, including grocery stores, a post office, chemist and off-licence, are all within a five-minute walk from the marina. Among the local onshore activities are golf, mountain climbing in Newcastle, which is 18 miles south, aswell as scenic walks at Ardglass and Delamont Park.

Published in Irish Marinas

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)