At last night’s Isle of Wight council’s Cabinet meeting, the member for transport, Phil Jordan, gave some good news about the Cowes Floating Bridge.
He explained the timeline of work (see below) that should lead to the service resuming on 13th December.
Prow modifications are being made in an attempt to resolve the issue with the rams that keep failing. All works an testing should be completed by earlier December, but, he explained, the MCA require crew after a re refreshed in training and they themselves want to inspect the Bridge before it’s brought back into service.
Leader: “My sincere thanks”
Leader of the council, Lora Peacey-Wilcox, thanked the staff,
“Who have been to hell and back for the past four years, with all the uncertainty with hours, jobs etc and everything they’ve had to put up with, like people spitting in their faces and the aggravation they’ve had, so my sincere thanks to them and the team that have hopefully brought this to some kind of conclusion”
Love: An ongoing catastrophic failure
East Cowes councillor, Karl Love, said,
“It has been an ongoing catastrophic failure to deal with this long before now that should have been dealt with years ago in my view when we first started to identify all these issues, and save ourselves millions of pounds.”
He asked for costs of this particular failure that has seen the Floating Bridge out of action since August 2021. Cllr Jordan said he didn’t have them to hand but would get them to the ward councillor for East Cowes.
Jordan: The positive decision for the future is still to come
Cllr Jordan did point out that a decision should be made in January about the best way forward for the long term. He said,
“If the report led us down the path of choosing to procure a new vessel, that would take about three years to procure and then we are faced, as always, with the question that if that was the case, do we just leave no crossing there for the three years?
“The answer is probably that we shouldn’t do that therefore the costs that we’ve incurred and loss of revenue is something that we’ve had to do to try and maintain the crossing. I think the positive decision for the future is still to come.”
Practically new FB6
Cllr Jordan finished by saying,
“We’ve just about replaced that Floating Bridge, we’ve replaced the motors, replaced the chain, we’ve replaced the rams, it’s a floating tub, it’s not really a boat as such, so we’re rather hoping with the modifications the levels of failure will be greatly reduced.”
Timeline of works
- Valve blocks refitted on 10th November
- New shafts and new motors to be fitted around 15th November
- Tandem hydraulic pumps to be refitted week of 15th November
- New cylinders will be ready around 22nd November (2 weeks earlier than scheduled)
- New hydraulic hoses to be refitted as equipment is refitted.
- Prow modifications to be finished by end of November
- Prows to be refitted by end of November
- All works completed, systems tested and commissioned by 5th December
- 06.12.21 – MCA inspection
- 07.12.21 – Training team briefed
- 08.12.21 – Chain adjustment and chain surveys to confirm clearance (date dependant on tidal range)
- 08.12.21 to 12.12.21 – Crew training and familiarisation
- 13.12.21 – FB6 returns to service at 5am
Image: © With kind permission of Allan Marsh
