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Displaying items by tag: Seatruck FGS newbuilds

6th April 2012

Ferry For Falmouth

#FERRY NEWSEuropean Endeavour (2000/ 24,046grt), the largest of three ferries running for P&O's Dublin-Liverpool route departed from the capital's port this afternoon bound for A&P Groups dry-dock facility in Falmouth, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The former Dover-Calais serving ferry started working on the Irish Sea on a full-time basis last year as previously reported. Her fleetmates are the 17,000 tonnes sisters Norbank and Norbay.

The trio of ro-pax ferries are to a design where freight is predominately the main cargo and passenger capacity is reduced considerably compared to most conventional ferries. European Endeavour can handle 130 lorries and accommodate 210 passengers whereas her fleetmates are the reverse with greater freight capacity for 150 freight units and a reduced capacity for 114 passengers.

P&O are the only ferry firm on the route providing passenger and car ferry service though they do not cater for 'foot' passengers. Their rivals Seatruck Ferries offer the only dedicated freight-operation on a network of routes on the north Irish Sea including the Liffey-Mersey link, where in recent months new tonnage has entered service.

Published in Ferry

Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC) is one of Europe's biggest yacht racing clubs. It has almost sixteen hundred elected members. It presents more than 100 perpetual trophies each season some dating back to 1884. It provides weekly racing for upwards of 360 yachts, ranging from ocean-going forty footers to small dinghies for juniors.

Undaunted by austerity and encircling gloom, Dublin Bay Sailing Club (DBSC), supported by an institutional memory of one hundred and twenty-nine years of racing and having survived two world wars, a civil war and not to mention the nineteen-thirties depression, it continues to present its racing programme year after year as a cherished Dublin sporting institution.

The DBSC formula that, over the years, has worked very well for Dun Laoghaire sailors. As ever DBSC start racing at the end of April and finish at the end of September. The current commodore is Eddie Totterdell of the National Yacht Club.

The character of racing remains broadly the same in recent times, with starts and finishes at Club's two committee boats, one of them DBSC's new flagship, the Freebird. The latter will also service dinghy racing on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Having more in the way of creature comfort than the John T. Biggs, it has enabled the dinghy sub-committee to attract a regular team to manage its races, very much as happened in the case of MacLir and more recently with the Spirit of the Irish. The expectation is that this will raise the quality of dinghy race management, which, operating as it did on a class quota system, had tended to suffer from a lack of continuity.