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Displaying items by tag: H&W veteran

An inaugural voyage of the 'Meander and Dander', a new tourism offering from White River Charters, took place on the river Bann on Tuesday 26th April.

Invited guests and visitors enjoyed the beautiful spring conditions onboard M.V. Kingfisher, a unique 75-year-old wooden motor vessel, built by shipyard Harland and Wolff and beautifully restored by business partners Fiona Bryant and Ian McKnight during the Covid pandemic.

The fully guided heritage journey retraces the voyages of the stone age hunter-gatherers who explored, hunted, and fished the River Bann and tells the fascinating origins story of human settlement in Ireland and how the river and Mountsandel are at its heart.

From the marina in Coleraine, visitors were treated to a slow and gentle cruise downstream into the Bann Estuary Area of Special Science interest (ASSI), where they were rewarded with views of the wonderful estuarine and coastal scenery, ancient sand dunes and various habitats before turning and navigating upstream towards Mountsandel.

More on the Causeway Coast Community website. 

Published in Inland Waterways

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.