Wightlink’s cross-Solent ferry ‘St Faith’ is celebrating 30 years in service today (Thursday).
The 3000-ton ferry, which can accommodate 142 cars, 12 lorries and 722 passengers, was built by Cochrane Shipbuilders in Selby at the end of the 1980s. She was launched on 28th February 1990 and entered service for the very first time on 16th July that year.
30 years on and St Faith is the last of her class to be sailing the Solent, with sisters St Helens and St Catherine sold off to Italian ferry company Delcomar.
St Faith first operated under the Sealink brand before the operation became known as Wightlink in 1991. She was one of the fastest car ferries in the company at the time and could complete the Isle of Wight crossing in just 35 minutes.
It’s thought that ageing St Faith has crossed the Solent between Fishbourne and Portsmouth more than 200,000 times over the past 30 years. Nowadays she has a more relaxed life with St Clare and Victoria of Wight taking over the majority of sailings on the route.
The future of the St Faith is unknown but it’s thought she will stay in the fleet for the time being acting as a reliable spare and a third vessel for the busy Fishbourne route.
St Clare celebrates 20 years in service in 2021.
Whereas the fastcat has given up working, to be a bone idle boat, kicking back in portsmouth, living off state benefits.
Never mind if you can’t use it, you can’t spread the virus around can you…..
the virus is happily spreading around the planet and will continue to do so, despite all the futile efforts of governments in all countries.
Lockdowns have proven not to have worked in the southern hemisphere countries as they are getting hit hard now.
This virus is now part of the family of coronaviruses that circulate through the human population of this planet.
The 1918 spanish flu, which killed far more, managed to circulate the globe quite happily without the age of jet travel and mass movement of people for holidays and businesses.
The lockdowns are only in place, because the virus primarily affects old people, who are the ones making the rules. If this only affected younger people, there would be no lock down, no news and just a “bad year of a new strain of flu”
Not having the fastcat running won’t prevent the virus spreading where it wants to.
The cat should be running and wightlink are just making excuses.