Scilly Ferries, a division of Harland & Wolff Group, is a new ferry operator that was due to start running in May between the Isles of Scilly and Penzance, Cornwall, but has been delayed.

The shipbuilder group announced on Friday that the new fast ferry, which is to be renamed Atlantic Wolff, has been chartered for its 90-minute service between the archipelago and mainland England and will not run until early June.

H&W’s Group’s chief executive officer, John Wood, apologized to customers who had made reservations with the operator to be marketed as Scilly Ferries, with sailings to start in May.

The CEO said the new (passenger-only) ferry Atlantic Wolff, would depart Spain for the UK in the coming days and would then need to go through a regulatory process.

He added that the process the 42-metre ferry had to go through before it could run was "significant and important," and the timescale was "a little out of our gift.".

BBC News has more on the delay of the new operator on the service off south-west England, from where Afloat adds it will operate sailings up to twice a day to and from St Mary’s, the largest of the five inhabited islands.

This week, Afloat identified the high-speed aluminium catamaran as the former Aquabus Jet 1, which departed Vilvanova, near Barcelona, on the western Mediterranean. The Damen-built 4212 design fast-ferry flagged in Tuvalu, yesterday called en route to Algeciras, has transited the Strait of Gibraltar and this morning is off Portugal, bound for Lisbon, with a final UK destination in Portsmouth.

Aside from the delayed start to the summer season, according to the Scilly Ferries website, they anticipate running the (catamaran-based) service as late into the autumn as the weather allows.

Its rival is the Isles of Scilly Steamship Group, whose origins date to 1920, operate the 2-hour, 45-minute island lifeline and popular tourist route using an aging ferry, Scillonian III, which is to be replaced by a newbuild along with a freighter.