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Displaying items by tag: Students visit

Warrenpoint Harbour Authority this week welcomed students from St. Louis Grammar School in Kilkeel, Co. Down as they took a tour of the port estate before boarding a Seatruck Ferries-freight ship that operates on the Irish Sea.

The young students boarded the M.V. Seatruck Point, Afloat adds a P-class ro-ro vessel custom built for Seatruck Ferries but was originally named Clipper Point. The 210 trailer-unit capacity vessel is the leadship of a quartet built by Astilleros de Huelva S.A., Huelva in southern Spain.

WHA thanked the Seatruck team for supporting the visit and showing the students around the 14,759 gross tonnes freight-ferry which operates the Warrenpoint-Heysham route.

This route is one of three on the Irish Sea that Seatruck (owned by CLdN) operates between the UK and Ireland where at Dublin Port, hub operations are linked to routes connecting mainland Europe including the Iberian Peninsula.

The port authority has a close association with the school as former St Louis student and deputy Harbour Engineer at WHA, James Cunningham gave a presentation about Warrenpoint Port.

Micheal White, (son of WHA’s Mechanical Supervisor Raymond and) teacher at St Louis, organised the visit to the port on Carlingford Lough.

Published in Ports & Shipping

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.