Displaying items by tag: Silver Explorer

25th May 2012

Call Opens Galway Harbour Cruiseship Season

#CRUISE LINERS – Galway Harbour Company welcomed the first cruise caller this year with the Silver Explorer an expedition cruiseship with a capacity for over 130 guests, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The 6,072 tonnes vessel is on a cruise from Bordeaux and her most recent ports of call have been to Glengariff and Waterford. This evening the ship heads for Killybegs where passengers will visit the north-west.

For the rest of the season Galway port is scheduled for eight more cruise calls. Two cruise calls are scheduled in mid-August while the Silver Explorer is to make a return visit later that month. She is no stranger to Irish waters having served as the former Prince Albert II.

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Cruiseships Head for Isle of Man

#MANX CRUISE CALLS – The Manx capital is set to welcome over a dozen cruise callers for the season which starts next month according to www.visitisleman.com

Two of the 14 calls that are scheduled to Douglas belong to the Silversea Cruises fleet, the Silver Cloud due in June, has been a fairly frequent visitor to the Isle of Man in the past. While the company's recently acquired 'Expedition' vessel Silver Explorer will be visiting the Island for the first time earlier in May.

Other distinctive inaugural callers in 2012 include the Seven Seas Voyager. The Berlitz Guide rated luxury premium class vessel is also scheduled to visit Douglas again the following year.

In addition to the 2012 season, the Thomson Spirit is due to call in early September, a vessel with a 1,250 passenger capability.

Below is the 2012 cruise call list

Quest for Adventure, 8th May

Arion, 26th May

Discovery, 28th May

Silver Explorer, 31st May

Marco Polo, 4th June

Ocean Countess, 5th June

Seven Seas Voyager, 7th June

Silver Cloud, 8th June

Saga Sapphire, 4th July

Quest for Adventure, 9th July

Marco Polo, 16th July

Deutschland, 20th July

Hebridean Princess, 21st August

Thomson Spirit, 6th September

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A Former Royal is Set to Return

Following the visit of Grand Princess to Dublin Port on Monday another cruiseship which also had a royal-theme to its name is to dock tommorow, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The cruiseship Silver Explorer was formerly the Prince Albert II, named after the monarch of Monaco who arrived on his first state visit to Ireland accompanied by his fiancée Charlene Whittstock in April.

At 6,000 tonnes, the luxuriously appointed expedition cruiseship caters for only 132 guests. She is designed to explore remote waters and with an ice-strenghtened hull she can provide destinations that include the polar ice-caps. Shore-based excursions from the ship are taken by a fleet of Zodiac-craft to transport passengers to isolated locations.

Onboard the Bahama-flagged vessel, passenger can browse in the boutique, sip a drink in the internet café, enjoy a full-service spa, take a beauty treatment in the salon, get fit in the gym or take it easy in the sauna. Plus there's live-evening entertainment and not forgetting the two top-deck whirlpools.

For a vessel of this size her facilities are comparatively impressive to the large cruise giant's such as the Grand Princess. She became the first cruiseship to measure over 100,000 tonnes when she made an inaugural call to the capital in 2004.

Nearly 300m long the vessel is the equivalent in length to three football pitches. The ship may not actually feature a playing pitch though she does have a nine-hole putting golf course!

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About the 29er Skiff Dinghy

The 29er is a one-design double-handed, single trapeze skiff for youth sailors.

There is an active class in Ireland, just one of the 38-countries from across all continents now racing the high-performance skiff.

The 29er is one of the latest dinghy classes to arrive in Ireland and has a 50/50 split between boys and girls.

The class like to describe the boat as "The most popular skiff for sailors who want to go fast!".

Derived from the Olympic class 49er class and designed by Julian Bethwaite the 29er was first produced in 1998.

Two sailors sail the 29er, one on trapeze.

The 6.25-metre high rig features a fractional asymmetrical spinnaker; a self-tacking jib decreases the workload of the crew, making manoeuvres more efficient and freeing the crew to take the mainsheet upwind and on two-sail reaches.

The 15.00 m2 spinnaker rigging set-up challenges crews to be fit and coordinated, and manoeuvres in the boat require athleticism due to its lack of inherent stability and the high speed with which the fully battened mainsail and jib power up.

The 74kg weight hull is constructed of fibreglass-reinforced polyester in a foam sandwich layout.

The fully battened mainsail and jib are made from a transparent Mylar laminate with orange or red Dacron trimming, while the spinnaker is manufactured from ripstop Nylon.

The mast is in three parts - an aluminium bottom and middle section, with a polyester-fibreglass composite tip to increase mast bend and decrease both overall weights, and the capsizing moment a heavy mast tip can generate. Foils are aluminium or fibreglass.

About the ILCA/Laser Dinghy

The ILCA, formerly known as the Laser, is the most produced boat in the world, with 220,000 units built since 1971.

It's easy to see why the single-handed dinghy has won the title of the most widely distributed boat of all time.

The Laser is a one-design dinghy, the hulls being identical but three rigs that can be used according to the size and weight of the sailor.

The class is international, with sailors from 120 countries. The boat has also been an Olympic class since 1996, being both the men's and women's singlehanded dinghy.

Three rigs are recognised by the International Laser Class Association (ILCA):

ILCA 4: sail of 4.70m2

ILCA 6: sail of 5.76 m2

ILCA 7: sail of 7.06 m2