Travel
Overnight Crossing Delayed
Silting issues in Heysham have been blamed for the difficulties, while the company said the weather forecast had led to today’s cancelled sailings.
Passengers travelling to Heysham endured a crossing of over six-and-a-half hours last night.
Silting issues in Heysham have been blamed for the difficulties, while the company said the weather forecast had led to today’s cancelled sailings.
Having been due to leave Heysham at 3.30am, 45 minutes later than planned, the Steam Packet said the vessel left Lancashire just before 7.30am this morning.
Having left the island at 9.04pm, she arrived in Heysham at 3.50am and is now unlikely to arrive in the island before late-morning.
This means that today’s cancelled crossings, if they had sailed, would have been severely delayed.
One passenger who contacted Gef earlier this morning said: ‘It’s now 03.40 and we’ve just turned in the port and are reversing to moor up. Might get off at 04.00 if I’m lucky having turned up to check in at 6.30 last night.’
The passenger also expressed their surprise at the weather forecast being blamed for today’s cancelled sailings and, in an email they’ve sent to CEO Brian Thomson, suggested that the silting in Heysham is the real issue and that the company knew this when it decided to cancel today’s sailings.
They said that had they know of the longer overnight sailing, they would have considered their travel and accommodation plans, which they would not now reach until after 4am.
Instead of blaming Mannxman for this, the passenger, who said she is a ‘wonderful new boat’ with ‘excellent crews’, said that the company’s communication had been poor and asked Mr Thomson to confirm what responsibility Peel Ports has to keep the harbour dredged.
They said: ‘We cannot just shrug our shoulders and say that it’s a problem caused by storms. If we are committed to using Heysham, it needs to be dredged to a suitable depth for Manxman at all tides.’
