P&O Portsmouth

[Stocky]

Have just returned from 4 days at the Festival of the Sea in Portsmouth.  Interesting in our marquee was P&O Ferries.  Bit of a nerve being in the town that they are all but withdrawing from.  Complaining was like water of a ducks back but I did try on a daily basis.  All they could talk about (in Portsmouth) was using Dover Calais or going to Spain.  They were distributing 2005 brochures and when asked when we could expect the 2006 the response was probably April if the past was anything to go by.  at least I had fun baiting them and it was senior managers not staff I was picking on.

 

Watching the Le Havre Ferries coming in a friend from the Chamber of Shipping was surprised at how few passengers were on deck considering the number of tall ships and warships they were passing.  They must have been empty.  Didn’t seem to be that many on the Normadie Express either.

 

Didn’t see Brittany Ferries but Portsmouth had a stand, only had Brittany Ferry brochures.  They were not happy with loosing P&O but did say that there was a new service being discussed but had no details.  Who knows, by 2010 we might have competition on the Western

[La Guerriere]

The saga of P&O on the Wstern routes has been aired may time of both this and various other BB's. My own feeling is that they had been running down their interest in the Western routes for some time:

a) It is alwasy going to be difficult for any operator for compete with BF on the Western routes. There is always the suspicion that BF have (adjustable subsidies) coming from interests on the other side of La Manche, and these subsidies can be adjusted to play merry hell with other operators. They can also play games with truck rates and perks.

b) For many a long year P&O were operating the old vessels, first four (two on Le Havre, two on Cherbourg), then later on the two Le Havre boats were transferred to Cherbourg when they took on the two Olau boats ex Sheerness / Vlissingen. The two Olau boats, built for a neat 6-hour crossing Sheerness / Vlissingen are a bit big for Le Havre, and were heavy on cabins and light on public areas, and the Club Class was frankly crap. The two old Super Vikings were cheap to run, the capital had long since been paid off, and despite their somewhat crummy exterior appearance were quite comfortable,. But they ran up against the latest SOLAS rules and would have had to be stringently limited on passenger numbers. I think P&O saw the end in sight some years back, this is why they never found a decent replacement for the SV's, and just chartered in the Irish Ferries freight ro-ro as the "new" Pride of Whatever.

c) The Western routes are difficult to service: because of the distance you can't squeeze more than two round trips per day without a quantum leap in speed, which also means a huge leap in fuel prices. Also fast craft can only really operate summers on the Western routes, and you need spare capacity back-up on the slowboats for fast craft weather and mechanical downtime.

d) It's difficult to see how another operator could slot in. Because of the fuel costs and long voyage time it's never going to be possible to run a "cheapo" service even if you bring your own deckchairs and sandwiches. Because of the capacity requirements, there is going to be no point in building bigger boats. The only possibility is somebody bring in something second-hand and relatively economic to run....

I expect Will have something to add....

Jim (Oxfordshire, A34, M27, 50)

[Will]

What Jim says is spot on, he obviously knows what he is talking about. Although I certainly wouldn't totally rule out a Speedferries operation on the western channel I think it's pretty unlikely at least in the short to medium term. The route isn't, as Jim says, really suitable for these vessels. One of the things which most people (not Jim) forget is that freight traffic is very important, the bread and butter in fact, on these routes. Nothing is going to compete sensibly with Brittany Ferries unless it offers a good freight service, which Speedferries will never be able to do. BF's service is very attractive to truck operators to the extent that although the vehicle and pasenger market is still significant, it isn't by far the be all and end all. This is why they can still operate three services each way every day throughout the year to Caen even with only a handful of cars on board.

The most likely alternative to BF would be a Transmanche type operation using an older chartered-in ship or two with the backing of the French local and regional councils (funny how people find this totally acceptable but make unfounded complaints about BF's services being subsidised). But while BF is still running services there is little reason for French regions to invest in sea transport for these areas. Whatever, it's not something to be taken on lightly. Operating such a ferry costs, according to some figures I have, at least US$30,000 per day - and quite a lot can be added to that in dues for expensive ports like Portsmouth, Cherbourg or (particularly) Le Havre.

Oddly enough, UK-France ferry routes don't qualify for European subsidies and assistance for the simple reason that there is no existing road between the two countries from which a ferry service would remove heavy traffic. Neither are they considered a vital transport link in an underprivileged area, such as the Greek Island services which are therefore granted dispensations from latest safety regulations, allowing them to use very old ships.

[La Guerriere]

Thanks, Will

Jim

[Will]

An interesting fact about high speed ferries is that on most routes they are, despite higher fuel and maintenance costs, actually cheaper to run (by some 30%). This is purely because it takes considerably fewer staff to operate them - one shift per day is usually sufficient, as against the two or three shifts, meaning extra crew who have to be accommodated on board, for conventional ships.

Despite this, other than Normandie Express which seems to be running successfully this summer, and last year's P&O Caen service (which was actually run by a Danish company) fast ferries have never worked that well on the western channel. Even those two are summer-only services. Condor does a pretty good job, but it is still plagued by cancellations - these are inevitable. The ships can take pretty severe seas - the US military has successfully tested sister ships to Normandie Express up to 11m significant wave height - but the occupants can't. So the safety rules limit them to wave heights less than one third of that figure, which is uncomfortable enough for most.

[La Guerriere]

It's the very high accelerations that really cause the problems. Rather like the old days of the hovercraft (which somebody once likened to "being towed very fast across a ploughed field on a tin tray", there comes a point with the fast craft when it's impossible to move or walk about. The fast craft are very stable, and pitch and roll quite violently with short roll and pitch periods, and can slam violently. The culture of ferry travel is not yet "please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts" ... there would have to be quite a lot of hosing down and cars would have to be tied down as well, which slows up turn round

Jim (again)