Surfing whilst sailing .. or clicking whilst crossing?

Recent news in from Irish Ferries that Wifi is now free to all passengers on their Irish Sea crossings.

Having a quick comparative look at the other ferry companies to see whether they do Wifi or not, as I blogged about in 2009, NorfolkLine (now DFDS) offer free wifi to their passengers, and Brittany Ferries offer free Wifi in their port buildings but charge onboard the actual Brittany Ferry boats (at a rather steep £4 per hour or £8.50 for 3 hours).

Condor seem to only have Wifi in the Jersey port (but its free) and LD Lines seem to offer Wifi onboard the boats that Transmanche ferries operate (Côte d'Albâtre and Seven Sisters), but not the boats that sail under the LD Lines company name.

Surf's up !

Condor announces a new fastcat for UK to Jersey and France, but it's not quite so new ...

CondorFerries press release

I picked up news today of a recent fast catamaran purchase by Condor Ferries to replace the ageing Condor 10 on their services between the UK, Channel Islands and St Malo in France.

Condor report that the ship will be known as the Condor Rapide and is due to go into service in May 2010. The 86m vessel is a "younger sister" of their existing ferries Condor Vitesse and Condor Express; and prior to its purchase by Condor she was operated as part of the Royal Australian Navy as HMAS Jervis Bay.

BBC (Channel Islands) news covers the same story of the Condor purchase of HMAS Jervis Bay and reports that Condor hope to be able to "increase capacity by up to three times".

When I read the report and the mention of the name HMAS Jervis Bay it triggered a recollection that I'd heard that ship name before, and sure enough a quick Google search took me to the Wikipedia entry on HMAS Jervis Bay where my suspicions were confirmed, this was none other than the ex-SpeedFerries vessell, SpeedOne. I knew I'd heard the name before!

I've not seen any news of SpeedOne since June 2009 when I wrote about the judicial sale of SpeedOne for £8m and selling off of the remaining assets of SpeedFerries. At the time I reported that SpeedOne had been sold to a company called 'Prospect Number 70 Limited' and mused that it was likely that the boat had been sold to some form of venture capital company and would in time be sold onto another ferry operator.

Well one up to me, I was proven right!

There's a final comment in the CondorFerries press release (which makes no mention whatsoever of SpeedFerries - no surprise there really) that "She is in excellent condition, her previous owners have invested a seven figure sum in upgrades, and Condor Ferries will spend further substantial sums in the coming months to ensure she meets the highest standards".
No mention either of what price Condor paid - I'll bet it was more than £8m.

See further blog postings on the rise and fall of SpeedFerries

Ferry news snippets from Euroferries, Condor and P&O

Three little ferry-related news snippets:

First up is EuroFerries where the news is there is no news. I've written a few articles about EuroFerries proposed new service from Ramsgate to Boulogne, most recently on 1st August when at a press conference they announced that "service would commence during August".

Well it's early September now and the Euroferries website remains unchanged, still saying they'll launch in August so it's a bit of a poor reflection if they can't even update their own website.

There's further speculation and commentary over on Kent based 'The Big Blog', most recently on August 25th with a video of the Bonanza Express still sitting in Tenerife, not painted in EuroFerries colours, doing nothing. Most recent suggestion is that the boat will arrive in the UK by September 10th.

Don't hold your breath on this one methinks ...


Secondly following on from P&O's €360m contract for two new Dover/Calais 'super' ferries, there's a press release on P&O's website announcing that they've completed the keel laying at Rauma shipyard in Finland for the first of the new boats which is due into service at the end of 2010.


And finally, spare a thought for Condor Ferries who according to the Jersey Evening Post managed to let a door fall off a ferry whilst it was enroute to France. Apparently passenger safety wasn't compromised and a temporary repair has now been made.

Back from a great Easter break

Following the problems with Toby's expired passport and then the last minute problem with the passport photo and loosing the French house keys everything went OK after that, I went to Peterborough passport office and collected the new passport on Saturday 4th April, and we were on the 7:30am Condor ferry from Weymouth to St Malo with a couple of hours stop off in Guernsey enroute.

After all the problems with getting the new passport it was quite galling to note that nowhere on our trip, booking in to the two ferries, or embarking in France, did anyone even look at our passports at all. I might have well have not bothered!! Of course coming back to the UK on Sunday they were a bit more stringent and they we did need them then so it wasn't an entirely wasted £94 for the passport renewal.

We had a really nice time over in our Brittany Gite. The weather was a bit mixed, we had some days of sun, then some days of rain, then finished off with some days of sun.

And when it was warm and sunny we were able to sit outside on the patio and eat both our lunchtime and evening meals there, something I don't think we'd be able to do in the UK in April.

For a number of reasons including too much work, going to the South of France for our August 2008 holiday and moving home in the UK in September 2008, it's been nearly 9 months since I was last over at the Gite in June 2008. This has been the longest gap we've had since we first bought the Gite in 2004 so there were plenty of the "little jobs" to do when we got over there - I'll write about some of them in later blog postings.

Like the last time I was over the French fishermen were on strike and blockading the ports. Unfortunately (despite my hopes otherwise) the strike was over all too quickly and so we had no problems coming back on Sunday. I rather hoped the strike would have left us isolated in France for another week or so!

Looking forward to going to Brittany again in August, this time for 3 weeks break- yipee!

PS: We've still got late holiday availability for April and May 2009 so if you fancy a break I can thoroughly recommend our Gite!!

Cut price ferry tickets to France

As I blogged back in November, December and earlier this month, following the demise of SpeedFerries I'm having to look for other travel options to enjoy a holiday in our French Holiday Home.

For once we've got ourselves organised this year and have booked ourselves in for a two week stay at Easter and then a three week August summer holiday. In 2008 what with moving house and a difficult project at work we only went over to the Gite as a family once, at Easter, so it'll be lovely to take more time off and relax a bit more.

For Easter I've booked an outward crossing with Condor Ferries from Poole to St Malo which gives us a few hours stop-off enroute in Jersey (which I've never been to), and then a quick hour-and-a-bit drive at the other side from St Malo to the Gite. We're returning back through Dieppe with LD Lines, so it's a bit of a longer drive, but it's some £70 cheaper and is overall probably slightly quicker too.

I've been trying to decide which route to take for August and as we intend to take our dog Dexter with us, and as Liz gets really stressed out with the thought of him "all alone" in the car, it's better if we take one of the shorter crossings.

As luck would have it I've received a couple of emails special offers in the last few days so the choice (and cost) has been made a bit easier.

First arriving in my mailbox was LD Lines who are promoting their new Dover Boulogne route with single journey crossings costing from just £24. I noticed that that the email was sent to the email address I've used previously for SpeedFerries, and in the LD Lines email they explained that they've bought up the SpeedFerries customer contact list from the company administrators.

LDLines have also managed to bring the start of their new Dover/Boulogne service forward, originally it was due to commence in July 2009, now it starts on 12th February.

For the three week period I wanted in August the cost of a Saturday to Saturday return crossing came in with LDLines at £79. To this I'll have to pay roughly £40 of fuel and £15 of tolls each way, so at £189 total cost it still compares extremely favourably with the £400-500 cost that I'd have to pay with Brittany Ferries for the shorter western channel routes. Don't get me wrong, the BF boats are lovely, spacious, and with good onboard facilities, and the shorter drive is nice too, but it's still an awfully large price premium to pay.

Next I took a look at the same August dates with Norfolk Line from Dover to Dunkerque.

Depending on what time of day I travel at single tickets range from £17.50 (for a silly o'clock in the morning) through £29 and up to a maximum of £42. In the past I've noticed a slight saving by buying two single tickets with NL as the return sailing from France is priced in Euros (and the prices can vary during the day), so maybe I can save a few quid, but as it's another half hour drive up the coastal motorway to Dunkerque there's probably not much difference in cost overall when compared to LDLines.

And then I received an email from Ferrycheap.com. Just for good measure I received the email twice, one that was sent direct to me from FerryCheap, and one that was sent through the email address I've used with SpeedFerries (so looks like Ferrycheap have also bought up the SpeedFerries customer contact database).

FerryCheap are running a NorfolkLine special offer of a car with 4 passengers on their Dover-Dunkirk route for any date up to 17th December 2009.

There's just two different ticket prices:
  High Season (3rd-19th April and 17th July-6th September) - £29 each way
OR
  Low Season (any other dates) - £19 each way

And all tickets are fully flexible with no amendment fees so you can change your booking any time you want - as long as there's space on the boat of course!

Only other condition of this special offer is that you must book your crossings by 18 February 2009.

So we'll be NorfolkLining it in August methinks.