A series of majestic sailing ships will arrive at Belfast Harbour as part of this year's Maritime Festival on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 June.

The ships will be open to the public from 11am - 5pm, subject to tides and ship restrictions. They will be berthed on both sides of the River Lagan at Queen’s Quay, next to the Odyssey, and Donegall Quay.

Lough Erne Yacht Club’s 1818 birth was a gathering of Subscribers to fund a navigation chart. With it to mark safe waters they took to racing. Hence the Club’s original twin-aimed title – The Subscribers to the Boat Races on Lough Erne, for the encouragement of fast Sailing Boats, and for the improvement of the Navigation of the Lake. 190 years on, the latest revised OSNI maps are on sale in good bookshops, £7.20 the pair, Upper and Lower Loughs.

An European funded project to survey the seabed off the northern coast of Ireland, parts of which have not been surveyed since Victorian times, has started to provide some spectacular results showing underwater cliffs, reefs, caves and what may have been a lagoon. The wreck of a ship which sank in 1918 has also been discovered.