A number of sailings have been cancelled on Red Funnel’s East Cowes-Southampton service for this coming weekend as a result of urgent maintenance work that needs to be carried out at the East Cowes terminal.
The repair work relates to one of the East Cowes mooring dolphins, known as ‘Dolphin 3’. The dolphin is essential to enabling Red Funnel’s vehicle ferries to moor alongside in East Cowes. A routine inspection uncovered that Dolphin 3’s fendering system – a buffer device used to slow its ships down when docking – requires urgent repair.
Between 20:30 on Saturday (3rd September) and 06:00 on Sunday, and again between 20:30 on Sunday and 05:00 on Monday (5th September), no ferries will be able to dock at East Cowes. This means that 4 sailings in each direction have been cancelled including the 21:45, 23:30, 01:30 and 04:30 from East Cowes and the 20:15, 22:00, 23:59 and 03:00 from Southampton.
The last ferry from East Cowes will be 20:30 on Saturday and Sunday, whilst the last departure from Southampton will be 19:00 on both days.
To counterbalance and support essential freight, Red Funnel has added 2 additional crossings in the early hours of Monday 5th September, with the addition of a 04:00 departure from Southampton and a 05:30 departure from East Cowes.
Red Funnel has already begun contacting impacted/booked customers, who will be offered alternate sailing times and additional assistance. Due to the timing of the works, the operator cites that a relatively low number of bookings are impacted.
Leanna Lakes, Operations Director at Red Funnel, said:
“We heavily invest in regular maintenance and improvements across all vessels and fendering structures. While we generally get more lead time to schedule larger maintenance projects; sometimes, our inspections uncover essential work that can’t wait and needs to be addressed more urgently, and this is one of those occasions. We have done our best to limit the impact to our customers by carrying out the required work overnight.
Article continues below this advertisement “Nonetheless, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause for those who planned to travel with us during this time. We’ll be signposting this information across all our communications channels from today so that anyone wanting to travel during the impacted time can make alternate arrangements.”
The company’s Red Jet service between West Cowes and Southampton will remain unaffected.
Really?
Again?
This is terrible! We rely on these ferries to restock our shops etc. What an awful service. Surely it’s time to build a bridge and stop holding us all to ransom?
This is only because they have to make sure the ferries are working to bring all those lycra idiots over for this waste of time bike race, you know the one that is causing chaos already, and will cause more chaos. Can’t have the ferries breaking down so they can’t get over, what a travesty and on the TV too, then again no one will watch it anyway.
Don’t you have anything better to do in life mate? You seem to be on here all of the time. Why don’t you go out and do something useful SDCC?
So when do you suggest that they do what is essential maintenance? Perhaps during the day time when the majority of the lorries that supply our shops and industries travel? I am sure that to minimise their loss in profits they have chosen the times when there is minimal travel. As for a bridge or a tunnel – it will never happen as much as some might want it because of the billions, yes billions, that they would cost with no recompense for many many years.