CalMac faces a difficult few weeks as it tries to maintain service while juggling scheduled winter maintenance slots and unexpected repairs.<\/p>\n
Another large vessel, MV Lord of the Isles which normally serves South Uist, is also currently in dry dock due a “small fault” with its steel plating close to the waterline.<\/p>\n
The underlying issue is delays to vessel replacement with many vessels now well beyond their expected service life, but the situation should improve during the year as new ships arrive.<\/p>\n
The first of four large ferries being built in Turkey, MV Isle of Islay, although delayed by more than a year, is expected to be handed over by the Cemre shipyard in the next few weeks before making the journey to Scotland. <\/p>\n
The remaining three ships are due to follow on at six-monthly intervals, while MV Glen Rosa, earmarked for the Arran route, is currently due for completion by the Ferguson shipyard by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Work is also said to be progressing well on seven small ferries being built by a shipyard in Poland. <\/p>\n
The charter of MV Alfred has provided CalMac with vital extra capacity while it awaits new vessels, which are procured by a separate government-owned firm CMAL, but the arrangement has lasted far longer than expected. <\/p>\n
The cost of the charter, while it includes crewing costs and fuel, is now more than double the \u00a314m paid by Orkney-based Pentland Ferries for construction of the ship by a Vietnamese shipyard in 2019. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CalMac faces a difficult few weeks as it tries to maintain service while juggling scheduled winter maintenance slots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-366270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}