Wightlink is running a revised timetable on its Fishbourne-Portsmouth route today (Friday) due to a mechanical issue
The undisclosed issue with the vessel St Clare emerged later yesterday afternoon, which led to a number of last-minute cancellations.
Today, customers have been informed that a number of sailings have had to be pulled as engineers carry out repairs to get the vessel back into service as quickly as possible.
As it stands, Wightlink is operating every other timetabled sailings.
For more details visit www.wightlink.co.uk/updates.
Sara Howden, Head of Customer Experience at Wightlink, has said:
“St Clare has been taken out of service because of a mechanical fault and our engineers are currently working hard to fix it, so the ferry can come back into service as soon as possible.
“We have been contacting customers with bookings to move them to alternative sailings on Victoria of Wight or on our Yarmouth to Lymington route.
Article continues below this advertisement “Our third ship on the Fishbourne-Portsmouth route, St Faith, is already in Falmouth for dry-docking as part of its scheduled annual refit and cannot come back into service.
“We sincerely apologise for disrupting our customers’ travel plans. If customers do not want to travel today, a full refund will be provided”.
UPDATE @ 19:21 – It has been confirmed that St Clare has now returned to service and sailed from Portsmouth to Fishbourne at 18:57, after engineers repaired the earlier mechanical fault.
A spokesperson for Wightlink has said:
“We are sorry that many customers had their sailing times changed at short notice and thank them for their patience while our colleagues did their best to help. We apologise for the disruption to customers’ travel plans”.
Given that St Faith is away for refit and St. Clare is now so unreliable, is it really beyond them to move the spare ship from Lymington up to Portsmouth to act as spare until St. Faith returns? Surely a backup is more important at Portsmouth?