In what is a wonderfully surreal act of assistance, Campbeltown’s Kintyre Express has been zipping to the assistance of the Arran ferry passengers following an incident at around 5.30pm yesterday evening – when the big one had a coming together with the harbour wall at Ardrossan, after getting hit with a 55mph (Force 9) gust as she came in to berth.
She was tied up until the wind dropped and was then able to reverse onto the linkspan and discharge passengers and vehicles.
There have been no sailings between Brodick and Ardrossan today while CalMac have crewed up the relief vessel, the MV Isle of Arran, which is in Campbeltown. MV Caledonian Isles is in dry dock for repairs and should be available for service shortly.
MV Isle of Arran is due to pick up the Ardrossan to Brodick service tomorrow morning (Thursday 16th February), weather permitting.
CalMac do not get nearly enough credit for the way they respond to situations like this. On the one hand they’re literally juggling with boats. On the other, they’re also bringing into alignment a host pf operational factors relating to harbours, piers, routes and the specific embarkation features of available boats.
The Kintyre Express 12-seater fast passenger ferry has today been helping passengers stranded on the island, shuttling from Lochranza in the north of Arran to Ardrossan.
The company got a call this afternoon to ask if they could take a family of 5 from Arran – and it turned out to be a family who own a farm on the island - to the mainland,so that they could make their flight to Florida and in particular Disney Land, where they were holidaying for a couple of weeks.
Colin Craig, MD of West Coast Motors which owns Kintyre Express, says: ‘As you can imagine the caller was very distressed at the thought of missing their holiday. Haydn Chambers (skipper) and Peter Stogdale in Kintyre Express 2 got them off the island at Lochranza at 1630 and took them to Largs, where they were able to make their way to the airport and continue with their holiday.
‘I’m delighted Kintyre Express was able to step in to help but all the credit deservedly goes to Haydn and Peter who literally dropped everything to crew the boat and to Emma and Karina who dealt all the phone calls to make it happen.’
This is the sort of team work that makes the Kintyre Express service so special, Flexibiilty is central and in a business like theirs, going the extra mile is rather a built in feature.
The switch of boats will have been a bit of a change of expectations for the family crossing, with the harbour-bashing ferry carrying around 275 passengers into Ardrossan.
Great image, isn’t it? A leviathan crippled at Ardrossan, while around its skirts shoots the bright speedy little Kintyre Express – fit for pretty well any conditions itself, with its scheduled services on the stunning route from Campbeltown to Ballycastle on the north coast of Ireland.
We understand that there were no injuries in the incident at Ardrossan and the CalMac service will be disrupted only until tomorrow morning when the relief ferry takes over the route.
Correction added above: We had initially accepted that the incident was at 18.30 yesterday but thanks to a commenter below who was a passenger on the boat at the time, we now know that it was happened at around 17.30pm. The rest of our detail has come direct from CalMac and from Kintyre Express, who have good reason to know all about it.
It was yesterday evening that the Caledonian Isles bumped the Ardrossan harbour wall, and apparently it’ll be tomorrow morning before a replacement vessel is in service; bad luck for Arran – and for Calmac when the Stornoway and Islay services have both been affected by an incident with another boat while at Birkenhead for repairs, and all this while other boats are on the annual drydock shuffle.
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Corrected. Many thanks for spotting the glitch
– and for the detailed knowledge of calmac fleet movements.
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Update: The ‘Isle of Arran’ appears to be currently en route from Ardrossan to Brodick, so congratulations to Calmac for getting back up and running (with an extra evening service) already.
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Another AIS fan? Nothing like it.
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A lot of reports have the time wrong for the report.
It was the 4.40 pm sailing to Ardrosan which hit the pier, I was on it so the time of the incident was around 5.30pm, not 6.30 pm.
You could be the first to get the details right!
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For Michael: Many thanks for the correction – which has been made above – and credited.
Have you ever been on Kintyre Express?
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No I never have but is a great story that they were able to help out.
I think the question will now be asked over the safety of Ardrossan harbour for a ship this size.
I can see Calmac having to seriously consider the safety here as if this happens again then surely they have to be held accountable; they need to have shown that they have put steps in place to avoid this happening again.
Having been on the boat I can assure you that is was not just a small collison, a serious impact took place with plates etc smashing from the racks in the canteen.
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If windage on the approach to Ardrossan is a problem, perhaps that has a bearing on the Scottish Ferries Review proposal to put two smaller boats on this route – a proposal in which we see no great economic logic.
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Ardrossan harbour seems to be one of the most awkward of Calmac’s ports, so if I lived on Arran I’d be wondering if there’s any way of making it more accessible in bad weather – would that be impossible, or is there a touch of the ‘can’t be done’ philosophy at work here?
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I have! I’d be glad to be rescued in these state of the art boats. Haydn and Peter are skilled, reassuring and pleasant and it doesn’t surprise me they dropped everything to make sure the holiday wasn’t ruined.
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Ardrossan Harbour is a hazardous approach for any vessel. The Ferry mainland terminal should be relocated to the more sheltered waters near Hunterston or Fairlie from whence it could operate virtually year round. In the past the steamers only used Fairlie in winter for these very reasons.
The Cal Mac crews do a great job getting their vessel in and out of Ardrossan but perhaps too much is being asked of them or they are tempted to operate in winds above port limits.
All other commercial operators have left Ardrossan. Probably time the ferry relocated as well before something worse happens.
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Interesting – Ardrossan is clearly the closest mainland port for the Brodick ferry, so have improvements to make it fit for purpose been ruled out as quite impossible?
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I would say the port authority have made the facilities at Ardrossan as safe as they can but often the weather completely overwhelms the entrance which is completely exposed to western gales.
The distance to say Hunterston is only about 2 to 3 miles more.It is sheltered and there is already rail and road access.It is certainly worth a study if nothing else.
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Maybe Hunterston’s the answer – if rail access can be provided (presumably the best location would be Fairlie).
I just wonder if the Ardrossan entrance could be reconfigured with a really hefty new breakwater to reduce it’s vulnerability to gales from the west – which are a fact of life in this area. This might sound fanciful, but there are other harbours around the world on unpromising coasts that have been made to work by the right breakwater layout. (It always surprises me that Aberdeen – despite the wealth and economic importance – seemingly can’t be equipped with a fit-for-purpose harbour entrance). Maybe Britain’s just not much good at prioritising infrastructure investment.
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Ferry has hit Port Askaig pier and suffered serious damage on many occasions but they want to run all or most of the Islay crossings to there. Ardrossan will probably be their preferred choice.
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The Islay situation is surely to do with the more constricted and weather-vulnerable approach to Port Ellen making Port Askaig less liable to disruption, despite the very strong tides at the latter. The rocks at Port Ellen are a fact of life, so is it a similar problem at Ardrossan, or is there scope for improvement?
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Sorry do not agree with your theory as Cruise ships and fully laden Barley boats come through the channel with no problem and most are bigger than the ferry. Majority of crew prefer Port Ellen.
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It’s not a theory – it’s my impression from past use of the routes to and from Port Ellen and Port Askaig, and from being aware in recent years of what clearly seems to have been far more weather-related disruption at Port Ellen than at Port Askaig. I suppose only the statistics would prove or disprove this.
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Love the surreal vision of a ferry from Port Askaig to Ardrossan – a perverse marriage of regular catastrophes.
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give skippers a chance as boats carry a lot off weight and is noy easy moored in strong winds as a skipper for forty years you ca,nt always be perfect
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For william verner: This is not going to be a skipper error. Getting hit with a 55+ knot gust on the point of entry to what is already a difficult harbour is not a manageable event. It will have been a nightmare moment and sympathies will be with the skipper.
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Yes there is no doubt our Cal Mac masters and crews are superb.No criticism at all and for sure they will have the odd bump during their career. But we should give them the safest harbours possible to work in. Many of our ports and harbours are not in the best place on Clyde & West coast, more from old historical rail connections than for being the best place to site a port.
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Now the Isle of Mull hits the pier in Oban.
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And, apparently ss a result of this, the Islay service cut-backs continue into next week.
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