Dublin decker
The world’s “biggest” multideck ferry will sail between Britain and Ireland from next year. It will be a super-sized sister ship to the W.B. Yeats and will cover the key route between Dublin and Holyhead.
News of the monster ferry – reckoned to be the world’s largest – came at the official launch for the W.B. Yeats, a mighty €149million new ship from Irish Ferries.
At 51,388 gross tonnage, W.B. Yeats can carry 300 cars, 165 trucks and more than 1,800 passengers – and she is named after the revered Nobel Prize-winning poet.
The capacity is impressive, but Eamonn Rothwell – chief of the firm’s owner Irish Continental Group – said it will be surpassed by the yet-to-be-named €164million vessel coming into service in 2020.
Also being built at the Flensburg Swanky cabin on the £129million W.B. Yeats
yard in northern Germany, it will carry up to 1,500 cars or 330 trucks, with 67,300 gross tonnage. Passenger capacity is yet to be announced.
On-board standards will feel more like a luxury cruise ship – as they do on the W.B. Yeats, which I toured while she was in port in Dublin between Irish Sea sailings.
I was hugely impressed by the public areas and cabins, with a chic, contemporary design.
Sea views abound in the lounges, bars and swish restaurants such as the Maud Gonne, a la carte Lady Gregory and Boylan’s Brasserie. The
food is excellent and there’s free wi-fi and two cinemas – all on a ship powered by industry leading ecofriendly low-emissions technology.
But it was the cabins that really wowed. Inside ones offer up to four bunk-style berths and are very comfortable. The outside ones and suites are the showstoppers that feel like swanky hotel rooms – one has a large balcony overlooking the bow.
W.B. Yeats sails the Dublin-holyhead route to mid-march then transfers to Dublin-cherbourg for the overnight summer holiday season, before returning to the Irish Sea in the autumn. See irishferries.com