Ben-my-Chree has ended its first charter stint relief role on Stena Line’s southern Irish Sea route of Rosslare-Fishguard, from where, since this morning, the ropax repositioned to Holyhead, North Wales, writes Jehan Ashmore.
As Afloat earlier reported today, the ferry owned by the Isle of Man Steam Packet Co. (IOMSPCo), was yesterday forced to withdraw its service earlier than scheduled due to adverse weather. In addition to cancelled sailings today between Ireland and Wales and at Holyhead, Storm Claudia's recent related weather caused havoc at the port, as ferries were not able to enter until finally arriving but more than 19 hours late.
Originally it was planned to operate Ben-my-Chree with a final sailing inbound to Fishguard tonight; however, the stern-only vehicle loading ropax remained overnight in South Wales. Overall, load figures on the St. George's Channel connection are not surprisingly low given this quiet time of the winter season.
Now that the Port of Fishguard is temporarily closed for maintenance, Stena passengers have been transferred automatically to competitor Irish Ferries using their Rosslare-Pembroke Dock route. Whereas Fishguard's routine ropax, Stena Nordica, remains in a relief capacity on the Holyhead-Dublin route to facilitate Stena Estrid, which only arrived back at its port in Holyhead today and is due a planned dry-docking. Likewise, it will eventually lead to the ‘Nordica’ also taking its turn for annual maintenance.
The charter of Ben-my-Chree to Stena is part of the operators’ ‘temporary’ space-charter capacity agreement with Irish Ferries that continues into December. As the companies will be able to avail of space on each other’s ferries and permit passengers too to travel and ease convenience.
Afloat had tracked the 12,474-ton Ben-my-Chree, having departed Fishguard today just after 0800 and making a coastal passage offshore of Cardigan before it veered further into Cardigan Bay and headed towards the Llŷn Peninsula that juts out from North Wales into the Irish Sea.
During my recent excursion to Fishguard on board the Ben-My-Chree, the first exercise upon disembarkation at the ferry port located close to Goodwick (Wdig) facing opposite of Fishguard (Abergwaun), was to go up the headland overlooking scenic Fishguard Bay.
After walking up an initial set of steep steps that led to a coastal footpath that reached the summit at the Harbour Village, where Irish connections with the building of the harbour remain. From the summit, despite it being somewhat overcast, the Llŷn Peninsula could be observed, along with Bardsey Island and Snowdon ('Yr Wyddfa / Eryri) mountain in North Wales.
At 12 noon today, Ben-my-Chree at 13 knots was west of Bardsey (Ynys Enlli), where the small island, which equally has a small population of just three (though it increases with visitors on pilgrimages), had formed as a visual highlight (albeit at a distance) during my daylight return leg on board Stena Adventurer in January as part of the company’s contingency plan to set up a temporary Dublin-Fishguard route to alleviate traffic building up at the then-closed Port of Holyhead (Caergybi) following Storm Darragh almost a year ago in early December. During a rare red wind warning alert, the storm battered the port off Anglesey (Ynys Môn) and across the Irish Sea to affect other routes.
Just before the peak of the storm, a ferry incident took place during berthing, causing damage to one of the jetty’s two integrated berth linkspans, initially closing the port and causing major travel disruption to passengers and freight before Christmas. The other undamaged berth was reopened in mid-January, but beforehand thousands of stranded passengers were re-routed, and Ben-my-Chree was chartered to serve Stena upon opening a temporary Dublin-Heysham and, albeit 'freight only'route.
After an investigation of the ferry berth incident and underwater examination of the exposed outer terminal jetty, extensive repairs took place at the UK’s second busiest ferry port, which did not fully reopen until July, some seven months after the damaged port infrastructure. Its impact also affected economies on both sides of the Irish Sea; this had led to a joint Ireland-Wales Government Task Force established to examine the sustainability and security of the vital trade route.
As for today's arrival of the Steam Packet vessel to Holyhead's cruise jetty this mid-afternoon, it marks a continuation of the charter from the IOMSPCo, where the 630-passenger, 275-car, and 90-freight-trailer-unit ropax takes up service on the central Irish Sea route with Dublin. The unaccompanied freight trailers also known as ‘drops’ (see photo), are where port-based vehicles, also called tugmasters, load and unload off the vehicle deck.
In what is expected to be an unusual arrangement on the Dublin-Holyhead route, the 'Ben' is to operate the roster not of a Stena ship but instead that of Irish Ferries cruise ferry James Joyce, which is to be redeployed to Rosslare-Pembroke duties. Currently this route is maintained by the routine ferry, Isle of Innisfree, before it goes off for scheduled dry-docking during this quiet time of the year but before it gets busier in the lead-up to the festive season.
