Tag Archives: workboat

Laying buoys

Here is a short page with a few photographs showing a Waterways Ireland crew at work in Athlone, where they were laying buoys to mark a course for the swimming element of a triathlon. Waterways Ireland is the main sponsor of the event and had evidently committed staff resources as well as cash.

The mysterious barge

This page has a photo of a barge with a mysterious device on its back end. Can you help to identify the device and say what it’s for?

Update after two hours

Many thanks to all who replied, and especially to Balliol for naming the beast and to Pete for finding similar devices elsewhere. I was looking for a replacement outboard for my inflatable dinghy, but I don’t think I’ll buy one of them.

Some updates

I’ve added some extra photos of

Waterways Ireland workboats (four photos down the bottom of the page)

non-WI workboats (several photos in several categories)

sailing boats (a single photo taken on Lough Ree)

traditional boats (three photos of Nore cots).

If you don’t want to have to scroll through everything on each page, ask your browser to find “July 2008” (all pages except Traditional boats) or “June 2008” (Traditional boats).

Moving a pump

Some years ago there was a scheme to install a hydroelectric generating plant at Tarmonbarry weir. The scheme was abandoned, and a Waterways Ireland team recently had to get a pump across the river to drain a bunded area. Here is how they moved the pump.

Carrickcraft rescue

We were at Dromod when a Carrickcraft hire cruiser went aground outside the harbour in poor weather. I was impressed by how quickly Carrickcraft got a rescue crew to the scene and how efficiently they got the boat off and into safety before a depression of 988 arrived. Here are photos of the rescue.

Updates 25 June 2009

I’ve added photos to some of the boat pages. Several of the new photos were kindly supplied by Tina of Wasserrausch, to whom I am very grateful. The additions are:

Traditional boats and replicas has a new photo of an Erne cot, supplied by Tina

Waterways Ireland workboats has photos of the new vessel Inis Cealtra (I’ve already announced these) and two photos of small boats at Munster Harbour. It also has a link to a page of detailed photos of Inis Cealtra

Non-WI workboats has photos, supplied by Tina, of ferries and workboats on Lough Erne and of two boats operated by environmental authorities

Sailing boats has photos of the skutsje Nieuwe Zorgen, which arrived on the Irish waterways in 2008

Wooden boats has several new photos of wooden boats photographed recently at Shannon Harbour, as well as a few better photos of boats that were already listed

Boats that are different has one addition.

As always, if I’ve got anything wrong, or omitted anything, do please leave a Comment at the bottom of the relevant page.

Waterways Ireland’s latest workboat: Inis Cealtra

Here are photographs of Waterways Ireland’s latest workboat, Inis Cealtra. The photos were taken at Portumna, at the head of Lough Derg, after Inis Cealtra, built in Killybegs Co Donegal, had travelled down the west coast, up the Shannon Estuary, through Limerick and then via Ardnacrusha Lock to Lough Derg on the Shannon.

These photos are of details, and are probably for the anoraks; for more general views, see the pics supplied by Waterways Ireland on my general WI workboats page.

More workboats

Here is a very long page showing working boats that are not operated by Waterways Ireland. They include hotel boats, restaurant boats, trip boats, rescue boats, police boats and sand barges.