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FOR THE FIRST time in 20 years, ’America’s Tall Ship’ the USCGC Eagle is visiting Dublin this weekend.
Standing an imposing 90m long and with an even more imposing US flag, the ship is docked at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay with the US Coast Guard offering free tours until Monday evening.
The training vessel arrived in Dublin today after a three-week sailing from Connecticut.
There are 148 Coast Guard cadets on board and about 70 more crew with most having at least two days off in while on shore. They could probably do with it, shifts on board the vessel usually start at 4am and last for 12 hours.
And that’s only on regular days, sometimes crew start at 12pm in the afternoon and are up for 16 hours until 4am the next morning.
For the most part, the cadets reported a cold yet enjoyable sailing across the Atlantic but on Tuesday morning things got a bit hairy when one of the cadets fell overboard.
The recruit was doing some cleaning up for the ship’s arrival in Dublin when he fell into the sea off the coast of Cork. Waterford Coast Guard’s helicopter was sent to the scene and hovered above the ship keeping an eye, but in the end their assistance was not required.
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The man overboard was back on board the 1,813 tonne ship within 11 minutes, a record in the ship’s 70-year US history according to press officer Lanora Stona.
“We often train for these kinds of incidents, but it was super impressive because we hadn’t done an overboard drill with this crew,” Stone says.
We had an Eagle record for how quickly we were able to get him up. This ship turned around and we got him on the side so he basically came up to the side and then crawled up the cargo net.
The ship itself was originally a Nazi-era vessel in the German Navy but was taken by the US as part of war reparations. It has been in operation in the US Coast Guard since 1946.
The Eagle usually comes to Europe every five years and the ship will be staying in Dublin until Tuesday when it sails on to London. More cadets will take over there and will man the ship for the journey back across the Atlantic.
The ship will stay docked at St. John Rogerson’s Quay until Tuesday and is open to the public each day until 7pm on Monday.
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