KE2 is GO: 01586 555 895

Kintyre Express II – or KE2 as she was formally named earlier today – came into Portavadie Marina in the early afternoon of 24th March 2011.

Think QE2, only much smaller, much faster, much more affordable, much friendlier and much more flexible in where it can go.

KE2 came into the spectacular new marina resort at Portavadie with all flags flying and with champion solo piper Lorne MacDougall from Carradale, playing on the afterdeck – Glendaruel Highlanders, Bengullion and Atholl Highlanders.

Met by a yacht motoring out from the marina to accompany her in, Kintyre Express II did not arrive alone.

Alongside for much of the way over but modestly ceding place on arrival to the new kid on the block, was her sister Kintyre Express I, or KE1. And she too was dressed for a party.

Haydn Chambers, skipper of KE2 and smiling since he took command of her yesterday, led the ever inventive Wilson Smith, skipper of KE1, all the way down to the No 1 and 2 berths beside the main gangway.

They tied up there, just below the promenade deck outside the main public buildings at the marina – the two-tiered restaurants and the mesmeric glass-and-light viewing tower.

Beside them in the third berth was Corryvreckan, the demonstration boat owned by their maker, Antrim’s RedBay Boats. After seeing the two Kintyre Express boats away from Cushendall, on the north east coast of Ireland yesterday afternoon, the RedBay team nipped across the channel themselves and had a good night at Portavadie, ready for the ceremony today.

This sheer ease and independence of movement and familiarity between places is what our waterways used to support. Thanks to Kintyre Express, we can now rediscover and relish this freedom and the wide ranging relationships it makes possible.

Kintyre Express will be promoting the destinations at both ends of its service.

The naming

KE2 had come to Portavadie for her naming by Mrs Jennifer Craig, wife of Willliam Craig and mother of Colin Craig, the father and son who run West Coast Motors together, the family’s transport company which owns Kintyre Express.

Colin Craig, in welcoming the guests to the event, remarked how glad everyone was to see the second Kintyre Express boat in the water – including RedBay Boats, since Kintyre Express has now paid its last stage bill.

He paid tribute to the calibre of the boats  – with good reason, their sea-keeping is superb; and to their maker, RedBay Boats. RedBay are one of only two companies worldwide who make such boats – a series of standard size RIB hulls but with custom designed and made superstructures, fittings and interiors.

They have sold lifeboat versions to St Helena and Bermuda and a patrol boat to the Seychelles – with a machine gun mounting on the bow – for use against pirates.

Then Colin Craig thanked his staff for their contributions to the adventure, praising them for their commitment and ability and including others who have been fully engaged in the enterprise.

After the skippers of the two boats, he specifically mentioned:

• Mairi Johnston whose input stretches from accounts, to design and marketing, to website development and who had spent the morning literally directing invisible traffic as fog caused all sorts of last minute rearrangements (See below)
• Neil Brown, Mairi’s partner, an ex-navy man and virtual in-house photographer for Kintyre Express and West Coast Motors, who also choreographed a spectacular photocall for the two boats off Cushendall yesterday. (You’ll see that on For Argyll tomorrow.)
• Dougie Martin, plant manager, who now divides his interest between buses and boats. After yesterday’s collection trip to Redbay and being on KE2 when she was put through her paces in sea trials and in Neil’s photocall, Dougie is now virtually a marine convert and was having new ideas about every five minutes.

And then Colin gave the champagne some welly, leaving his mother to control it admirably as she named the boat and wished it Godspeed. (He did tell her she was free to let the boat have the lot as he’d remembered to use the cheap stuff.)

Several members of the Craig family listened as Colin spoke – can one refer to ‘a crag of Craigs’? There’s something essentially durable about them.

Playing with this notion of the right collective noun, where the Scot Gaelic ‘clachan’ means a small settlement, the Irish Gaelic ‘cloghan’ means stepping stones. Perhaps in family terms, the Craigs are stepping stones, making progress possible for others, so we’ll settle for ‘a cloghan of Craigs’.

They included his father, William, his Uncle, Bob (above) and, we think we spotted another who may have been Colin’s brother, Ian. Seeing them together, the vitality in the DNA was very evident.

The morning’s mistery

This is not one of the typos for which we are rightly notorious (but take it from us, unbroken hours at the screen leave your eyes incapable of understanding what the spellchecker is telling you.)

The ‘mistery’ relates to what Mairi Johnston had to manage as this morning’s Tarbert to Portavadie ferry was suspended in thick fog.

As we drove down the east Cowal shoreside, keeping an eye on any possible movement of the sea mist, at the Portavadie slip we found it gradually lifting but still in a rolling band over on the Tarbert side.

This meant that the guests on board the Kintyre Express Executive Mini-Coach were left beached in Tarbert. Mairi was keeping us in touch all the way down the road and in the end the two Kintyre Express boats, each with more guests onboard, went into Tarbert and picked up their other guests from the coach.

And finally, there they were, twin flashes of bow wave and wake in the distance, barrelling out of Tarbert and focused on Portavadie.

Under a quarter of a mile off the sea entrance to the marina, they came to a halt and seemed to have a little comfort kiss to still the nerves before meeting the audience waiting for them inside.

But there was some last minute housekeeping to be done, to get the detail of the planned show on the water.

Piper Lorne MacDougall had to transfer – step between – the two boats rafted up at sea – kilted and with pipes.

We knew in advance he’d be doing that – but Lorne didn’t.

So we’d arranged with Neil Brown, who was with the boats, to take us a sneaky photograph of the move.

Lorne – with bagpipes expertly steered by Colin Craig – doesn’t look any too sure about the manoevre but, reunited with his pipes at the marina, he admitted – like ourselves – to being a Ship AIS  addict. (Google it. Try it.)

And fans of the pipes will enjoy Lorne’s acclaimed Planet Pipe website.

For the record, we heard his first note from the sea wall at the marina, high above the boats further out in the loch, at 12.20pm.

And there is no sound like it in the world, nothing that finds the depth of spirit of this instrument.

Then there was the bunting to be secured and the ‘Red Dusters’ to be flown from the cabin roof – first time for KE2.

And it was done. They were ready for their close up.

The Kintyre Express boats

Both boats are RedBay Stormforce 11 metre RIBs, fully cabined and both have a neat turn of speed. KE2 can do 38 knots with a full load of 12 passengers and their luggage – although in service she’ll be much more sedate.

They’re not easy to tell apart but it can be done. The tips are:

• their superstructures are different – KE2′s cabin is stepped up at the stern end
• their after decks are different – KE2 has wrap around seating in the stern, lockers below, parallel life rafts over the back end and a diving platform; KE1 has a more open fully railed after deck, with a single large canister life raft inboard
• and for the very sharp eyed, KE2′s bow is white to the edge of the deck, with dark blue curving away to each side; KE1′s blue band narrows but continues across the top of the bow so it makes a slightly darker impression below the prow.

Services and opportunities

KE1 is based in Troon and works mainly on very popular golfing charters, ferrying between Ayrshire and Kintyre and also over to Ireland. She also does specials, as on May 21st 2011 (following last year’s inaugural success) when she takes superbike fans over to Portrush and direct in to the harbour there for a day at the legendary North West 200 road race.

KE2 will be based in Campbeltown and will run the new fast passenger ferry service (free bikes)  – two return trips a day for four days a week – between there and Ballycastle on the Irish north coast.

She too will do charters and with boats as flexible as these, the extremely inventive Colin Craig and his equally creative team have a spectrum of service developments already in mind.

As demand builds, both boats could ply this route and double the numbers carried in each direction. There is a relief skipper lined up – Keith Wright, a former member of Campbeltown lifeboat – and he looked to us like a perfect fit for the team,  He too had at least one good new idea in the short time we had to chat.

Unlke Ro-Ros, these RedBay boats (Tom McLaughlin, the owner of the company is pictured above) can nip in and out of pretty well anywhere with an access berth and Colin Craig makes it clear that if the business is there, this is what they will do. For instance, If a scheduled service out of Ballycastle has a group from Cushendall booked on, the boat could come in to the pier there and pick them up, without disrupting the generous scheduled passage time.

The service is targeted chiefly on the active of all ages – the golfers, walkers and cyclists – and on whisky and music fans. Both sides of the route have famed golf courses, great long distance walking trails and scenic and challenging cycle routes to hand. And they each have world renowned distilleries (Bushmills near Ballycastle,  Springbank in Campbeltown) and music and other festivals.

We can see Mid Argyll’s wild swimmers making contact over the North Channel and taking a short break in some new waters, guided by new friends. And their Tri-Athlete colleagues from Lochgilphead might manage a break from Board duties at the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool and take on an Antrim club, wheel to wetsuit.

Kintyre Express will create packages for groups. The Kintyre Express Executive Mini-Coach, based at Campbeltown, will ferry Irish golfers from the pontoons at Campbeltown out to the two nearby world class golf courses at Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre – as it already does for visitors from the Ayrshire coast. It will also ferry visitors moving on from a Kintyre visit to airports and other ferries.

The Portavadie  Marina habit

The company is using the Portavadie Marina as the base for the full sea trials KE2 will now do before her inaugural service to Ballycastle on 27th May 2011.

Its breathtaking facilities are designed for everyone visiting by any means – from helicopter, to boat, to bike or on foot. They are also tailored to support those with any interest as well as or instead of sailing – from good food and drink, to walking, cycling, family holidays and short chill-out breaks in a place we promise will come as a complete surprise, in its hidden fastness.

Everyone has superb accommodation  located around this 100 acre site, from 4 star detached cottages for families and those with pets, to a bed and a locker for hikers and bikers, to the marina’s stylish take on the travelodge, to self catering bedsits, to 5 star apartments – some two story – each with a sauna in the bathroom for those wanting an affordable luxury break. And there’s an entire spa building to come – with indoor swimming pool.

The new Argyll dynamic

What is happening in Argyll at the moment is a coming together – almost by magnetic attraction in common energies – of business folk with a genuine enterpreneurial spirit, an interest in collaboration and cross marketing and a commitment to doing what they can to crank up ambition and enterprise in Argyll.

They hope to see this wonderfully rich and playful area start to reach towards it potential and to enjoy doing so – and so do all of us.

Kintyre Express has put a lot of grunt into this initiative. Enjoy it. £55 return – open for a considerable time and with free passage for bikes – is a steal for what this opens up – and for the unusual waterbus experience itself. As with our trip over on Tuesday and back on Wednesday – the views, in mist or sun, are unforgettable.

For Argyll unequivocally backs the initiatives arising from this emerging business synergy and the spirit that fuels them. We believe that this is exactly what Argyll needs and that it is from such sources  – private sector visionaries for the common good as well as for profit – that genuine economic development in Argyll will come. It will be born from business experience and commercial imagination.

Next?

Over the next few weeks, For Argyll will be publishing a series of articles on aspects of the Kintyre Express adventure and the company that owns it – starting tomorrow with the story of KE1 going to RedBay to bring her new sister home – and with the two of them performing a joint marine fantasia off Cushendall pier.

Remember what fun’s about. You can be part of this. It’s been designed for you. And after today it has a name – KE2, not QE2 – for the young at heart. (And that was Mairi Johnston’s take on the name, not ours.)

The Kintyre Express story series

As we complete and publish each story in a series on this adventurous initiative, its title in the list below becomes a live link – so bookmark this piece and keep an eye on the progress of the series.

• KE2 is GO: 01586 555 895 (this story)
• Kintyre Express: The journeys, the showboats, the team, the destinations, the boatbuilder (introduction to the series)
  
• Kintyre Express: The journeys – ‘in sunshine or in shadow’
  
• Kintyre Express: Showboating
• Kintyre Express: The Team
  
• Kintyre Express: The Kintyre destination
• Kintyre Express: The Antrim destination
• Kintyre Express: The boatbuilder – Redbay Boats