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Condor St Malo


Georgina

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My daughter uses them every three months during the spring to autumn season. The gare maritime is at the back of the BF one, there is a paying carpark but usually pretty full and is quite expensive. There is no free car park outside the terminal apart from an overnight type place for camping cars and I wouldn't leave a wheelbarrow there, let alone a vehicle!

Condor itself is fine unless the weather is bad when they cancel at the last moment and you have to transfer or cancel. Sometimes it is free and other times you must pay the difference to get on BF, my daughter has been caught like this numerous times. Also some sailings are transfers where you arrive at Jersey or Guernsey and have to offload and get onto a Condor Express or Vitesse from either a smaller cat or the boat from St.Malo. They also sail from both Weymouth and Poole depending on day and time. Overall she finds them, depending on month and sailing, half the price of BF and other times the same but the crossing time is only 5hrs except for the trans-ship where you often have four hours or more to wait in Guernsey andthere is no parking outside the port. Be warned if you are not a good sailor as it gets very rough, the vessel pitches from side to side and if people are sick, there is no escape from it,although when its calm you can go on deck.

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Val2, the smaller Cat (Wavepiercer) that operated between St Malo and the C.I was replaced last year with a newly acquired much larger version, the same size as the other two Condor Wavepiercers that operate to Weymouth and Poole, so they are all interchangeable. The UK service that goes through Jersey does not require disembarkation as the wait in Jersey is quite short, during which Border Control do the passport checks onboard, so when you arrive at Poole/Weymouth you don't have to clear immigration.  
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Just relating what my daughter has experienced from the last 4.5years working near Condor at Weymouth. True she has not crossed with them since last August but then,she had four hours to lose in Jersey and went shopping in Asda getting some clothes tax free. Several times though, bad loading at St.Malo has required her to take her car off at Guernsey and Jersey and then get back on because they put CI vehicles in the wrong place.
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  • 1 month later...

What is the Condor, a seacat? I have found them alright in any weather, we've used it a few times in the North Sea from the Hook of Holland.

It was the hover that got me. I truly laughed all the way from Dover to Calais....... the reason being, I got a drink and couldn't synchronise drinking it, just hilarious, but I never felt sick, I'm not usually sea sick. But if I was prone to it, I bet I would have been very sick.

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My son went last friday and returns on saturday. It took longer to get from St.Malo toJersey to change cats and then to Guernsey, than crossing the channel itself but at €312 return its not too bad. He said the woman from Rennes next to him talked the whole journey andthe bloke opposite was a wannabe drummer with two pens and a pair of headphones.
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