This in from Wightlink, in their own words. Ed
Wightlink staff battled to get customers across the Solent for Christmas during the worst of the storm on Monday afternoon and evening. Gusts of 92 miles an hour were recorded at the Needles as the rush home for Christmas led to one of the busiest days of the year.
Head of Port Operations Sean Millward explains,
“The shore crew at the car ferry terminal in Portsmouth did their best to get everyone on-board in atrocious conditions, the rain was coming down like stair rods.
“We are sorry we could not transport everyone on Monday but our priority will always be to get our customers safely to their destination and, while delays are frustrating, the old saying ‘it’s better to arrive late than not at all’ sums up the situation we faced on Monday.
“Captains Jim Blanch, Jim Harris, Attique Muhammad, Mike Smith and their crews are highly experienced seafarers and while they will do everything possible to keep the service running, there comes a point at which the wind and sea conditions dictate we must slow down or stop our service.”
Earlier in the day, the decision was taken to withdraw St Clare from service. This was because worsening conditions made it too difficult to berth Wightlink’s largest ship at the company’s Gunwharf terminal.
St Clare eventually berthed with the assistance of tugs at the nearby Portsmouth International Port to discharge vehicles and passengers. St Faith, St Helen and St Cecilia operated a shuttle service across the Solent for the rest of the day, the night ferry sailed as normal and the backlog of vehicle traffic was cleared by 09:00 on Tuesday morning.
Due to cancelled train departures from London Waterloo this evening (Christmas Eve), Wightlink Ferries has also added an additional Foot Passenger Catamaran crossing thanks to the goodwill of their crew to depart from Portsmouth Harbour to Ryde Pier Head at 21:15 to get customers home for Christmas.
Wightlink Chief Executive Russell Kew says,
“I am very proud of our staff who all coped magnificently with conditions at the limit during this extremely challenging time.
“They worked tirelessly and with good humour to help as many people as possible cross the Solent. We also want to thank our customers for their patience and understanding during the storm.”
Throughout the day, Wightlink kept customers informed through frequent website updates and social media messages. See below for sample tweets:
Isle of Wight-based customer service consultancy Performance in People praised Wightlink’s commitment to its customers in a blog post.
GmanIOW: Well done @wightlinkferry & @RedFunnel for running yesterday afternoon & all night in that weather – great effort guys.
LauraPragnell1: Well done @wightlinkferry staff at Portsmouth-Fishbourne cant be easy and thanks for keeping the ferries going
iow1984: @wightlinkferry a very big thank you for all your help today – everyone has been amazing during the storm. Safe journeys to overnight crew
kekam12: V impressed by @wightlinkferry efforts tonight, we’ve not made it on to a ferry yet, but doing a great job of answering tweets &updating us
sparklytom: Big respect to the @wightlinkferry crews – I may have been stuck in my car for 2 hrs but they’ve been directing traffic in the storm all day
Image: nicksie2008 under CC BY 2.0
