Displaying items by tag: Arran ferry redeployed to Islay

8th August 2016

CalMac to Redeploy Arran Ferry to Increase Islay Capacity

#ArranRedeployed - Scottish ferry operator, Caledonian MacBrayne is to redeploy a vessel from the Isle of Arran route to Islay and moving another to 24 hour working to increase capacity on the route.

The withdrawal of the Islay serving MV Hebridean Isles for urgent repairs reported last week here on Afloat.ie has left the Southern Hebrides island working with a single vessel over the last two weeks.

To ease disruption on the route, CalMac has now familiarised a new crew to operate the MV Finlaggan and the vessel will run an overnight freight service between Islay and Kennacraig, as well as her normal daytime timetable. Large vehicles such as caravans and camper vans will also be moved on to the overnight sailing to free up space during the day.

"We appreciate the inconvenience this ongoing disruption is causing and looked at all the options to address the issues the island is experiencing. This is particularly busy week,with the Islay Show taking place on Thursday, so we need to use the available fleet resources we have at our disposal to meet demand. Unfortunately, this means moving the the MV Isle of Arran off her normal Arran route. We realise this is not ideal, but hope the community on Arran understand the reasons behind this decision and we appreciate their cooperation," said CalMac's director of operations, Drew Collier.

"We feel this is the best solution we have to meet the demands we are currently experiencing across the network."

The MV Isle of Arran will sail the Kennacraig to Islay route begining from tomorrow, Tuesday and also Wednesday and Thursday of this week.

"We will be monitoring this on a daily basis and hopefully the redeployment of the Isle of Arran will be very short term only. Our technical team is working hard to get the Hebridean Isles back in service as quickly as possible and we appreciate people's patience and continuing understanding," added Drew.

Afloat adds while Isle of Arran is redeployed, her Arran fleetmate, M.V. Caledonian Isles will continue to operate sailings as normal on the Ardrossan-Brodick route

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The most significant events for the Half Ton Class has been the annual Half Ton Cup which was sailed under the IOR rules until 1993. More recently this has been replaced with the Half Ton Classics Cup. The venue of the event moved from continent to continent with over-representation on French or British ports. In later years the event is held biennially. Initially, it was proposed to hold events in Ireland, Britain and France by rotation. However, it was the Belgians who took the ball and ran with it. The Class is now managed from Belgium.