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Displaying items by tag: Brian Hogan

Delegates from 18 countries are attending an international conference on safety at sea in Cork where it has been revealed that, since the sinking of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, the main problem encountered during ship inspections has been with abandon ship and fire drills.
It is the 10th conference of the International Association for Safety and Survival Training – IASST – whose Chairman, Dmitrus Semjonovs, said that continuous research was being done by the organisation to improve safety at sea and advance the saving of lives by promoting safety and survival training.
The Chief Surveyor of the Irish Maritime Administration, Brian Hogan, said that encouraging personal responsibility for everyone at sea, from commercial to leisure, should be the main focus of maritime safety strategy.
The conference is being held at the National Maritime College in Ringaskiddy where the co-ordinator, Capt.Cormac MacSweeney, said that over the two days of discussions, response to emergency situations, from offshore operations to various aspects of shipping and small craft would be discussed. “Survival training is essential to safety at sea and that is vital to everyone who goes to sea.”

Published in Cork Harbour

The Dragon was designed by Johan Anker in 1929 as an entry for a competition run by the Royal Yacht Club of Gothenburg, to find a small keel-boat that could be used for simple weekend cruising among the islands and fjords of the Scandinavian seaboard. The original design had two berths and was ideally suited for cruising in his home waters of Norway. The boat quickly attracted owners and within ten years it had spread all over Europe.

The Dragon's long keel and elegant metre-boat lines remain unchanged, but today Dragons are constructed using the latest technology to make the boat durable and easy to maintain. GRP is the most popular material, but both new and old wooden boats regularly win major competitions while looking as beautiful as any craft afloat. Exotic materials are banned throughout the boat, and strict rules are applied to all areas of construction to avoid sacrificing value for a fractional increase in speed.

The key to the Dragon's enduring appeal lies in the careful development of its rig. Its well-balanced sail plan makes boat handling easy for lightweights, while a controlled process of development has produced one of the most flexible and controllable rigs of any racing boat.