By Colin Smeeton
A perfect storm of catastrophe left islanders and visitors marooned last weekend unable to leave or arrive on the main Arran ferry route for 65 hours.
In an unprecidented level of disruption, desperate residents had to resort to any means possible to get off the island, including ribs and small boats which ferried people to the mainland, many of whom had urgent appointments or would have otherwise have missed holiday flights.
The mercy missions, by volunteers, again showed the resilience and community spirit on Arran in the face of adversity caused by the breakdown of the MV Caledonian Isles which had just returned to service on the Ardrossan to Brodick route after a series of port trials across the ferry network.
Islanders have called the weekend disruption “totally unacceptable” and comes amid growing frustration at the continued deterioration of the service and fears over the seaworthness of the 31-year-old MV Caledonian Isles heading into winter.
This week, seven top officials in charge of the Clyde and Hebridean ferry service were on Arran in a pre-arranged meeting with the Isle of Arran Ferry Committee and they were left in no doubt as to the strength of feeling of the need for a resolution to the crisis.
The catalogue of failures which saw all sailings on the route cancelled on Friday started when MV Caledonian Isles developed a steering problem late on Thursday evening and continued later in the day when relief vessel MV Loch Fyne tried to help at the north end of the island but it also succumbed to technical issues.
That, for a time, left Arran completely isolated with no ferry service. A shuttle service with limited capacity was later made available to passenger vehicles, allowing locals and some visitors, many of who were also stranded on the island, the chance to leave.
Initially it was just the morning sailings of the MV Caledonian Isles which were cancelled on Friday with further sailings “under review”, however, by later that afternoon the remainder of the sailings were cancelled for the day and the following day (Saturday) while engineers investigated the problem.
Repairs on the vessel continued throughout the day and into Sunday, with the service finally resuming with a 12.30pm sailing from Ardrossan.
Meanwhile, to deal with the growing amount of backlogged traffic on the Ardrossan to Brodick route, and with MV Caledonian Isles’ ability to resume service as yet unknown, CalMac redeployed MV Alfred from its first day of service on the lifeline route between Tarbert and Lochmaddy to the Arran route.
MV Alfred was able to help by Sunday afternoon with three return sailings scheduled – by which time MV Caledonian Isles had been repaired and returned to service.
On Monday morning, MV Caledonian Isles faced further difficulties and rough sea swell conditions brought on by Storm Debi, however, the captain still attempted a 9.45am sailing from Ardrossan with the caveat that berthing at Brodick was not guaranteed.
Cautiously inching into the berth at Brodick with an easterly wind on its bow, the vessel managed to berth and discharge its passengers, but it was not able to load new passengers owing to the sea swell conditions and the restrictions of the passenger access system.
The vessel departed unladen to Ardrossan where it continued service for the remainder of the day with a delay of between 30 to 45 minutes.
MV Caledonian Isles berths at the head of the pier and uses ropes, side thrusters and a headlong wind to manoeuvre into the berth on a stormy Monday morning. 01_B46ferry01_23_stormy_berth