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

SpeedOne sold for £8m and an update from SpeedFerries administrators

When SpeedFerries was put into administration last year I became one of the creditors of 'SpeedFerries Limited (in Administration)' because they owed me for prepaid tickets that I'd not been able to use.

Back in January I learnt of the administrators plans and last week I received the latest, and perhaps final, update from the administrators on reducing the company's debt through selling and realising what few assets SpeedFerries had.

It's interesting to read what value was placed on SpeedFerries customer details as their customer database and various web domain names (except speedferries.com which is being retained by the administrators) was sold to LD Lines for £150,000.

Approval was given in the High Court in March for a Judicial Sale of SpeedOne to try to clear some of the £15m company debt, of which £12m was owed to Bank of Scotland and Incat for the SpeedOne ferry.

The administrators letter continued with details that sealed bids were submitted by 21st April 2009 for SpeedOne and the vessel was eventually purchased by a company called "Prospect Number 70 Limited" for £8m; most of which has already been distributed to the Bank of Scotland as primary secured lender. Prospect Number 70 Limited have now also bought the complete spares inventory for SpeedOne at an additional price of £60k.

The administrators themselves will be paid some £726k for their time and expenses in winding up the company and their letter finishes with 'The Joint Administrators do not anticipate the realisation of further assets in relation to the Company ... there will be insufficient funds to completely discharge the debts of BoS and as such there will be no funds available to discharge the debts of Incat (manufacturers for SpeedOne) .... and there will not be any amounts available to the non-preferential creditors of the Company' (i.e. ordinary customers like me).

And so that pretty much completes the story of SpeedFerries.

But who or what is 'Prospect Number 70 Limited' I wondered? And what do they plan to do with SpeedOne?

I've managed to find a bit of information on the public records held with Companies House (search for 'Prospect Number 70' then 'order information on this company') which are available for £1 for each company filing. Similar information is yielded (for £18 a pop) with a UK data search for Prospect Number 70.

The company was incorporated earlier this year and is currently registered at 25 Moorgate, London. There's three mortgages outstanding on the company, the company secretary is Taqi Ullah Mir, and the company directors are Nicholas James White, Anthony Michael Dean and John Gordon Davis. I did a bit of searching for these names on Google but couldn't find anything that seemed relevant.

So my guess is that SpeedOne has been bought by some kind of venture capitalist or opportunist company and they'll be selling the vessel on to another ferry company.

But who knows?

SpeedFerries SpeedOne judicial sale goes ahead

Back in January I wrote with details of SpeedFerries administrators proposals which included selling SpeedOne which was pretty much the only asset that the company had left, although there was some £12m owed to various creditors including Bank Of Scotland and Incat (the Australian manufacturers).

I read tonight on Lloyds List that judicial sale of the boat will now go ahead following representations to the High Court in London on Thursday.

Lloyds goes on to comment that in the current "market conditions" it's unlikely that the creditors will be able to recoup all their debt when the boat is sold.

On a more positive note there's announcements on both BBC News and Kent Online of a new Ramsgate to Boulogne service that EuroFerries are starting from March 31st.

The EuroFerries service is due to run four times a day and take 75 minutes for the crossing. Unfortunately there's no further details of the service or pricing on EuroFerries website yet.

Credit card refund for unused SpeedFerries tickets

Back in November I first blogged on SpeedFerries going into administration and the unused advance-purchase tickets I had that were now worthless. At the time a number of kind blog readers suggested that I put in a claim to my credit card company under the consumer credit act for the value of the tickets that SpeedFerries would not be honouring.

In December I reported that I'd put a claim in, and then in January I received details of the administrators proposals to windup SpeedFerries and also wrote about details of the administrators advice to other creditors to make a credit card claim.

Well it's all been quiet since I sent my disputed transaction claim in to the credit card company back in December, but yesterday my patience was rewarded as I received a letter from Asda card services telling me that they had passed my dispute onto SpeedFerries and had credited my card account with £205 - the value of the unused tickets.

So hopefully that's it and I'm at least not out of pocket after SpeedFerries failure.

Do please pass on a comment about your experiences of claiming for unused tickets if if you've been affected by SpeedFerries failure.

Speedferries Administrators' Statement of Proposals

Continuing the story of speedferries in administration after the notice to creditors, and of my own situation as a creditor of the company.

Over Christmas I received from Asda Mastercard a "dispute claim letter" requesting details of the nature of my credit card dispute, why I wanted to make a claim on my credit card, whether I had attempted to resolve the dispute with the supplier, etc.

I duly wrote them a letter explaining the background to my SpeedFerries advanced ticket purchase with details of the unused tickets I was claiming for, details of the company's fall into administration, and enclosed a copy of the Administrator's Notice to Creditors which set out the wind-up of SpeedFerries as a going concern.

Over on SpeedFerries website the Administrators have recently posted on the SF website a guide to credit card customers (and providers) in making a claim.

So far no response forthcoming from Asda; I'll let you know what happens.

Today I received another email from the SpeedFerries Administrators setting out details of their proposals to deal with "SpeedFerries in Administration". These creditor proposals are also published on the SF website along with details of the creditors and debtors, and make interesting if despondent reading.

SpeedFerries was setup in 2002 by Curt Stavis, began operating in 2004, and has made a trading loss every year since - accumulating to some £15m as at July 2008. In the latter end of last year the company experienced severe cash flow problems brought on by rising fuel prices and a decline in ticket and retail sales. Although shareholders had previously bailed the company out, on this occasion they declined to do so.

Problems escalated when the Port of Boulogne issued a claim for £1.3m of unpaid port fees, and subsequently seized SpeedOne on 6th November 2008.

As I read the 36 page administrators report it's clear the size of the problem that SpeedFerries faced. Under administration they've had to borrow a further £200,000 from Bank of Scotland in order to pay staff wages and ongoing costs (such as maintaining SpeedOne in saleable condition) but have only been able to identify some £60,000 of cash and money owed - not all of which they expect to receive.

SpeedFerries owe some £12.6m to Bank of Scotland (marine mortgage) and to Incat (the Australian manufacturers of SpeedOne). The companies principal asset is SpeedOne itself and the administrators are currently going through the judicial sale process to realise the maximum value for the boat.

131 staff of SpeedFerries have now lost their jobs - some of which from the list of staff creditors look likely to be married couples now both out of work (and all will only get the statutory minimum redundancy payment), roughly £3.7m is owed to some 200 trade creditors of which the largest sums are £1.3m to the Port of Boulogne, £1,100 to HM Revenue & Customs and a smaller £238k to Dover Harbour Board; a further £3.6m is owed to 50,300 customers with pre-paid tickets and a 100 or so investors in the company will also lose out.
I did have a wry smile from noticing that B&Q owe SpeedFerries 2p, some £3,182 is owed to a dry cleaning company, £500 to Microsoft AdCentre, £3,847 to Google Adwords and a massive £14,000 to the Douwe Egberts Coffee company!

The Administrators predict that after the sale of SpeedOne and realisation of any other company assets it's unlikely that the secured creditors (Bank of Scotland, Incat and the 131 company employees) will receive a full reimbursement, and so as a result the unsecured creditors (myself included as a customer creditor) will get nowt.

Us creditors are informed that because of the unlikelihood of payment the administrators don't intend to organise a creditors meeting - but if we creditors formally request one, and deposit suitable funds to cover the likely meeting expenditure, then one will be organised. Methinks this won't happen and I won't get an invite to a day-trip to Dover.

All in all very sad reading.

Meanwhile I am now having to look elsewhere for my 2009 ferry crossings to our holiday Gite.

Speedferries notice to all creditors

Continuing the situation after SpeedFerries (in Administration) stopped operating, I received an email from the administrators today:

NOTICE TO ALL CREDITORS

Speedferries Limited (In Administration) (‘the Company’)

On 12 November 2008 the Company entered administration and T Burton and I were appointed as Joint Administrators. The appointment was made by the Company's Directors under the provisions of paragraph 22(2) of Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986. Please find attached at the end of this email, the formal Notice of Appointment of the Joint Administrators.

A copy of the Notice of Appointment of the Joint Administrators is also available to download from the Company’s website: www.speedferries.com.

Immediately following appointment, the Joint Administrators, in accordance with Paragraph 3 of Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986, explored the option of a sale of the business and assets of the Company. Unfortunately, the offers that were received as part of this process were insufficient to provide the best outcome to all creditors, and as such the Joint Administrators regretfully announced the closure of the business on 25 November 2008.

As such, Speedferries Limited (In Administration) has now ceased to operate services between Dover and Boulogne and customers with pre-booked tickets are advised to seek alternative travel arrangements.

Customers who have booked by way of credit card should contact their credit card providers to determine if they are eligible to claim a refund for these now cancelled services. Some debit card services may also offer a refund so it may also be appropriate for customers to confirm with their banks if this option is available. Customers are further advised to check the Company’s website as there is a link to a section 'Credit Card Information' where further information regarding contacting your credit card provider and documents your credit card provider may request of you is available. Please note we are currently sourcing customer bookings/reservations data from the Company's external reservations database managers. This data is not yet however available for provision directly to the credit card providers for all customers.

Customers who wish to obtain a refund in respect of cancelled crossings and pre-booked tickets (and for which the option of claiming against their debit card or credit card provider is not available), are advised that, due to the administration, refunds in respect of these tickets are not able to be met, and that you now rank as unsecured creditors of the administration. We will continue to log your claims as unsecured creditors.

The officers of the Company are required to submit a Statement of Affairs, but as yet we are not in a position to give any information regarding the financial position. We shall send you a report as soon as it is reasonably practicable which will explain the objectives of the administration and give details of the financial position of the Company. This report will also provide an update on the prospects of a dividend to unsecured creditors.

If you have commenced formal recovery proceedings against the Company, I suggest that you contact my office before continuing, as a matter of priority, as no legal processes may continue against the Company without my consent or permission of the court. Please refer your query to Rob Apollo at the following email address: xxxx@uk.ey.com.

If you contend that you have any form of security or reservation of title in respect of goods that you previously supplied, please contact my office immediately and provide full written details and copies of documentation relating to your claim. Email queries should be referred to Simon Cooper at the following email address: xxxx@uk.ey.com.

Yours faithfully
for Speedferries Limited (in administration)

Angela Swarbrick and Tom Burton
Joint Administrators

I've already lodged a claim with my credit card company for the remaining unused tickets on my last block purchase of SpeedFerries tickets. The person I spoke to had heard of SpeedFerries failure and said that they'd had another claim a few days beforehand. I was advised that the card company would send me a claim form, still waiting for it to arrive, and the process after that seemed a bit hazy as to when I would get a refund of my ticket purchase. Will let you know.

Sadly Speedferries don't (speed) any more

Following on from my Blog posting announcing SpeedFerries in Administration the sad news appeared on their website yesterday that the official joint administrators announce the closure of Speedferries Limited (in administration).

The administrators have been trying since 12th November to sell the business as a going concern, and despite getting SpeedOne released from the French authorities they've been unable to find a buyer for the business.

Ferry operations have now been cancelled and customers are advised to "seek alternative travel arrangements".

I've still got quite a lot of pre-paid tickets with SpeedFerries, now quite useless of course, so will try to see if I can get a refund from my credit card company (thanks to the anonymous reader who made this suggestion in response to my earlier posting). I'll let you know how I get on.

Not quite sure which Ferry company we will start using from now on, have to go back to surveying the prices before each crossing I guess.

Speedferries in administration

I had held off blogging about Speedferries recent troubles for a few days, hoping that it was going to resolve itself, but it's looking like SpeedFerries are no longer going to exist any more - at least in their current format.

A couple of weeks ago, as reported on This French Life, SpeedFerries boat was seized in Boulogne by the French port authorities for non-payment of port fees.

At the time the SpeedFerries website reported that this was "totally unexpected, as the authorities had given written confirmation that no legal steps would be taken prior to a meeting planned for November 7th", but it appears that there was more to this than was being immediately reported, as by 12th November a SpeedFerries press release announced that the company was being placed into official administration.

A few days later on there's still no further news other than another press release on 14th November saying that more crossings were cancelled. The main SpeedFerries website announces that all crossings up to (as at today) the 19th November are cancelled with customers being advised to "wait for further information on future crossings and to keep any pre-booked tickets".

See SpeedFerries Press Releases for further news as and when it arrives.

I guess as I own a number of pre-booked SpeedFerries tickets I'll be classified as a creditor of the company; whether I get anything from those tickets as a result remains of course to be seen.

The joint administrators talk about their "key objective is to explore the option of selling the business as a going concern", so hopefully there'll be some Phoenix like resurrection as a result of the administration process - I hope so as SpeedFerries have certainly shaken up the cross-channel market and it would be a shame to see a return to near-monopoly prices from the other carriers.

Speed across the channel for £30, even in peak summer time

SpeedFerries announced today that they have relaunched their Super Ticket deal whereby you can book single crossings on their Dover/Boulogne route for just £30 for any dates from now up to the end of 2009!

And if you're not ready to firm up on your holiday dates just yet awhile you have the option to book as a Open Ticket which you can then schedule online for the specific sailings you require - again any date, even in peak school holidays, just as long as there's still space on the boat. You can easily save £100 against the regular sailing price.

Of course if you're wondering where to go in France I can recommend a lovely French holiday cottage.
(Not that I am biased in my opinion of course )

I also spotted over on SpeedFerries website that they are now taking Bicycles on SpeedOne if you fancy a more sedate trip.

A free ticket from SpeedFerries after they cancelled my crossing last week

SpeedFerries.com

Last week I wrote about my frustrating trip home after striking Boulogne fishermen caused SpeedFerries to cancel my crossing. Well today a bit of nice news in the email, a complementary return crossing ticket:

Dear Customer

Last week your crossing with SpeedFerries was affected by industrial action on the part of the fishermen in Boulogne.

As a gesture of good will for the inconvenience you experienced, SpeedFerries would like to offer you a free return ticket, which is valid for travel within the next 12 months. Should you be unable to use this ticket yourself, it can be passed on to a person of your choice.

The free ticket has been issued with a “dummy” date and name and can be activated for actual travel dates by logging on to http://ecommerce.speedferries.ats.fi/direct_amd/en/directmenu.asp using the reference number and security code below.

Reference number : XXXX it's a secret that I'm not telling my blog readers!
Security code : XXXX also not telling you this!

SpeedFerries is also pleased to inform you that the relevant parties have all committed to a long term solution and that we are assured that SpeedFerries’ customers will not be inconvenienced in the future by actions of this type.


Kind regards

SpeedFerries Ltd.

Definitely the right thing for SpeedFerries to have done, a good customer service result, and I'm happy to continue recommending them.

Speeding Ferry News

SpeedFerries.com

Over on This French Life, Craig McGinty was a bit quicker off the mark than I was with writing about SpeedFerries new foot passenger service so I won't repeat the details of his posting. Further details are on SpeedFerries website.

Whilst trying to find a ferry home from France on Monday (from McDonalds car park in Boulogne - see my Blog posting) I was looking at SpeedFerries website to see if they'd any news of the strike and when service might be resumed. Despite searching on all corners of their site I couldn't find any details of current sailing crossings (e.g. are they running on time or are there any localised delays) - black mark to Mr Stavis over this omission I feel.

Anyway I did come across a press release I hadn't seen before from May 2008 announcing that SpeedFerries have purchased SpeedOne the fast-cat they've had on hire from Incat since they started running in May 2004. The purchase comes as no real surprise as they've definitely established themselves as a viable ongoing ferry operation from Dover (with 12% of the ferry passenger vehicle market) and the monthly rental must have been an ongoing financial drain they were keen to remove.

Also mentioned in the press release was written confirmation that SpeedFerries are planning to source a second fast-cat to partner SpeedOne (and guess what it'll be called - no prizes for this one!) and that it might operate on alternative ferry routes.

There's been talk about SpeedFerries acquiring a second boat for some time now and I've even talked to crew myself onboard SpeedOne to see what they knew, but despite rumours for the last couple of years I've not seen it written on their website before. There's no additional news of a second boat on Incat's press releases so we'll have to wait and see what transpires.

It'll be really good if SpeedFerries do open up a second UK/France route, perhaps competing with LDLines on the 'mid-channel' (Le Havre and Dieppe), or even better with Brittany Ferries on the 'western channel' (St Malo, Cherbourg and Caen) - they could definitely do with some cut-price competition in my opinion as their fares right now can be quite outrageous.

Boulogne fisherman's strike meant a detour via Dunkerque

I'm writing this Blog posting whilst sitting on the quayside at Dunkerque waiting to be called to board the 8pm Norfolk Line sailing back to Dover. Unfortunately I can't find a WIFI signal so I won't be able to actually post the entry until I'm back in blighty.

On Thursday I left work slightly early and headed down to Dover en-route for a long weekend in our Brittany Gite. The main reason for going is that we're in the process of moving house in the UK and a friend of mine had recently given me his complete kitchen (cabinets, appliances, et al) as he was having a new one fitted. Thus we were given his old one which after a bit of remodelling would do perfect for the second half of our Gite I'm currently in the process of renovating. And with the imminent house move we didn't really want to have to move all the kitchen pieces from our current UK house to the new UK house, only to then a little while later to then have to move it again to France.

Hence why on Thursday I was driving to catch the SpeedFerries boat to Boulogne with the car extremely heavy on it's suspension. As well as all the kitchen cabinets which in themselves weigh enough I'd managed to fit in two large oak beams that were left over from when our front garden in the UK was terraced, so they too had to go to France before we moved.

Right now the Gite is booked up solid from June through to the end of August and I really wanted to take the things over, so for the first time I decided I'd go over when there were guests staying. I've never really wanted to do this before as I prefer to let people have the run of the place and not be disturbed by me coming and going, but I did need to clear the space so it was a compromise I had to take.

Of course I wasn't actually going to be staying in the Gite that the guests are staying in, now that Bob the builder has connected up the water in the second Gite I can at least "rough it" with a spare bed, the almost completed bathroom and an electric kettle - living on Pot Noodles and Sausage rolls for a few days won't kill me but the sooner I get the new kitchen fitted so I can have a few home comforts the better!

After a late arrival and long drive down from Boulogne I reached the Gite at 3am, left the car in the lane, and crept into the house so as not to disturb our guests. Next morning they were quite surprised to meet me but were very nice about it. Whilst we were chatting they told me how they'd come over via Norfolk Line through Dunkerque and had only paid £39 return for their crossing - an even cheaper deal than Speedferries!

Anyway, had a nice break over in France, did a bit of work on the house, met up with some nearby friends in Brittany, and all too soon Monday came around and it was time to set off back to England and work again Tuesday morning.

When I was over half way to Boulogne I received a text from SpeedFerries telling me that because of a French fisherman's strike none of their ferries were running at all today and I was advised to *urgently* call their UK call centre.

After 15 minutes on hold (which no doubt cost me a bit from my mobile) I finally got through and was told that a "lightening strike" had blockaded the port and so all they could do was to credit me the journey so I could rebook at a later date. Ironically this Boulogne/Dover ticket had already been credited to me once before in December 2007 when strong winds prevented SpeedFerries from operating - perhaps this is a cursed ticket, two cancellations for the same ticket is surely more than just bad luck??

Anyhow remembering my guests advice about the price of Norfolk Line tickets I decided I'd try them for a change instead of P&O or SeaFrance from Calais to Dover. I continued up to Boulogne and after filling up the car a the E Leclerc Hypermarket I parked in McDonald's car park to pickup the Free WiFi signal in all McDonalds restaurants. Worked a treat and by getting online I was able to book at the online *special* price of €46 instead of the standard €120 crossing price !

I did drive around the harbour in Boulogne for a bit to see what the fishing blockade looked like. I was hoping for scenes of angry fishermen waving haddock's or whatever they do when disgruntled, but there was just a few bored looking SpeedFerries staff hanging around the rather closed looking ferry port ...

Dunkerque ferry port reminds me rather of Calais of a few years ago; you drive through miles of desolate wasteland to find the ferry terminal, past rows of container lorries and warehouses, and when you get there there's not much in the way of facilities, just a cafe bar, toilet and a few video games.

Boat's arrived now so better blog off for now !

Speedferries - 10 trip voucher offer, only £230 for this next week

Speedferries voucher offers

News from SpeedFerries that they're doing a very limited offer of 10 flex-trip vouchers for just £230 (i.e. £23 per single crossing) until Friday 29th January.

After that the price rises to £280 so if you're quick you can save of £50 against the normal 10-trip price, and in fact save a fortune against the regular ticket price as these flex tickets are valid for 2 years for any sailing, just as long as they've got room on the boat.

So for example if you're sailing over to France in August peak season when the prices can reach £100 or more, you could even end up effectively with 8 free tickets!

There are other offers including 6-trip flex vouchers for £156 and 10-trip off-peak vouchers for £190 on Speedferries website - act quickly though!

Another week in France and a blowy trip home

Just got back on Sunday from being away in Brittany for a week at our Gite to give me a well deserved break from work and to get on with some work in the second house.

The week's break was really good, very relaxing, and I didn't think about work at all! Instead I spent the week sorting out the wiring for two of the new bedrooms in the second house; this sounds somewhat easier than it actually was as I had to move light switches from where they were positioned, put in new sockets for bedside lights, additional power and aerial sockets so we've flexibility to put a TV in the bedroom if we want, re-do the cabling for the lights from being central ceiling pendants to now be halogen tracks across the room, putting additional wooden braces into the plasterboard walls to take the weight of the halogen light transformer, etc, etc.

I also of course managed to watch some TV and drink a fair amount of red wine in the evenings !

All in all, a wonderful time.

Not everything went according to plan though, putting the cover on the swimming pool proved to be impossible and after two hours of struggling I eventually decided I probably had the wrong sized cover, but far and away the most exciting time was getting back home on Sunday morning.

I'd travelled over to Brittany using one of the Speedferries 10-trip Flex vouchers I bought in September 2006 for £24 each. No problems at all, a nice easy run over and drive down, arriving at the Gite on Saturday evening, just under 12 hours door-to-door elapsed time (including ferry, petrol station and stop-off's enroute).

On Saturday 1st I saw the weather forecast was not good and that there were strong winds and gales building up on Saturday evening. Phoning the Speedferries customer service desk they couldn't tell me that anything was going to be cancelled until the morning of the crossing itself.

When I got up at 3am on Sunday morning there was still no news of cancelled services on BBCi so I set off hoping that the weather forecast had proven to be wrong. Driving up from Brittany the weather was pretty good until I got to close to the port when the rain started. By the time I got to the dockside the rain was lashing down and the wind had picked up, so sure enough the boat was cancelled. Apparently Speedferries had sent me a text to tell me of this but for some reason I never received it.

Leaving Calais harbour

Fortunately although speedferries had had to cancel their high-speed catamaran, they thought that the larger ferry boats were still operating so I drove on to Calais and sure enough both P&O and Sea France were still running.

I was a bit shocked by the "112" I was quoted for P&O until I found out the price was 112 Euro's (£78), not quite as good as my £24 with speedferries but not too outrageous so I paid up and booked a slot on the next boat over. Sea France wanted €119 and I found out from another fellow traveller that Eurotunnel were charging €151 so by chance I'd ended up with the cheapest option.

Dover tug-boat

And the crossing itself was pretty good despite the 60-65mph (gusting to 85mph) winds.

Took a bit longer than normal as the boat had it's stabilisers out (which are apparently 5m long "wings" that come out from the sides), it was a bit rocky at times but no-where near as bad as the ferry ships I travelled on years ago.

It did take us ages to get into port as we had to queue behind other ferries until we could be towed into our berth by the Dover port tug. Instead of being the scheduled 90 minute crossing it took over 3 hours before we were finally back on dry land, but at least I got back home in the end somewhat tired after such a long day.

Slept well that night!

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Categories: Holiday, SpeedFerries

Off Peak ferry crossings for £19 with SpeedFerries

Speed One

As a change of scene from writing about the new Fosse, news in from SpeedFerries as to a new limited offer for 10 off-peak one-way Dover/Boulogne tickets for just £19 each.

The SpeedFerries off-peak tickets are valid on Monday to Thursday sailings apart from school holiday periods such as Christmas, Easter, mid-July to early September and the half-term breaks. Details of which days are and are not covered are on the SpeedFerries offpeak sailing guide.

So if you've not got kids and are flexible about your dates, then this must be the cheapest way to get to France.
(There's also of course a very nice holiday home available to rent all year should you need somewhere to stay whilst you're over in France ....)

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Categories: Ferry, SpeedFerries

August holiday vacancy problem solved, some lovely tenants found

Gite front door and driveway

In June I posted an article about an August cancellation for our Breton Gite and although I had a couple of enquiries we still had the peak season vacancy a couple of weeks later on.

And then I hit upon a brilliant idea as to how to fill the diary .... we could go !

It's probably a bit worrying that going and using our own holiday home didn't immediately spring to mind when the original guests cancelled, but like last year we'd resigned ourselves to not going in the peak season as we'd not got ourselves organised as to when we wanted to go and had taken guest bookings for August instead. Paying guests also have the big advantage of helping to pay the bills unlike when we go which only serves to reduce my bank account balance!

Liz and the boys had planned to go to Cornwall with her parents and brothers family for the start of August, but as the vacant dates were at the end of the month that wasn't a problem, it only remained to find out if I could get a ferry crossing at a reasonable time and at less cost than the Lichtenstein national debt ... some ferry companies charge outrageous prices for the summer holidays, especially one that shall remain nameless but let's refer to it as "BF" ....

A bit of searching of prices and I was amazed with the deal I managed to get with Speedferries. We're crossing over on the 7:10 from Dover to Boulogne on Monday 21st August and then only wanted a paltry £20 for the car and the four of us. The return journey in the evening a week Friday later would have cost £39 but as I'd already pre-paid for 10 Speedferry crossings at £24 each last year I used one of those tickets instead. By the time we add on petrol and €15 tolls each way it'll come to around £150 for the total travelling cost, but as we're only booking 5 weeks in advance of travelling in the peak school holiday period, I don't consider that bad value at all. Other (unnamed) ferry companies can charge £400 or more so I'm very happy with this.

Incidentally Speedferries are currently doing another special offer of 6 flexible tickets (valid for a year) for just £26 each - £156 in total. Offer ends 23rd July.

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Categories: Holiday, Guests, Ferry, SpeedFerries

SpeedFerries ticket sale - cross the channel to France for just £20

Over at SpeedFerries they've announced details of a basic ticket price sale, reducing the price of their Dover/Boulogne fast-cat down to just £20 each way. Remember that the basic tickets are non-refundable, non-changeable, but if you know when you want to travel then they're fantastic value for a cross-channel journey for car and all it's passengers.

SpeedFerries Basic Ticket Availability

To help track down the cheapest tickets they've also added a basic ticket availability page showing (in orange) the dates that currently have £20 tickets available. A snippet's shown above and availability obviously reduces as you get into summer, but there's still loads of dates showing in May, June and July.

Speedferries prices due to increase on Thursday

SpeedFerries

SpeedFerries have sent me a number of emails over the last couple of weeks advising me (as a valued customer) that they are due to increase their ferry prices on April 26th due to the recent diesel fuel price rises.

In the past they've not always stopped special offers or changed their prices on the day that they say they will, but if you are thinking of travelling to France this summer then it's worth booking as soon as possible.

If you can be certain about your travel dates then the Dover/Boulogne 'Basic ticket' can be unbeatable, costing as little as £18 for a crossing and these prices really are achievable, some of our August holiday guests paid just £25 which is still a bargain when compared to other ferry operators. Even if you don't know your precise dates the 'Flex tickets' are only £25 and as long as there's room on the boat you can change to any other sailing date.

A quick reminder that SpeedFerries have a number of different fare options, more details are on their website and in my March posting 'Speedferries announces new simpler fare structure and multi-crossing special offers':

One-way from	£18	£25	£22
Changeable	No	Yes	Yes
Parkable	No	Yes	Yes
Fixed Price	No	No	Yes
Priority Check-In	No	No	Yes
Check-In time	45 min.	30 min.	30 min.
Validity	departure	12 months	24 months

Final little titbit, when we were crossing over at Easter I asked one of the crew if there was any news on them getting a second boat (this was rumoured some time ago). He said that it had been delayed but was due to come into service in June or July, operating on the same Dover/Boulogne route.

Judging by how sold out they were at Easter (no space on any of the outbound sailings from 30th April to 9th May!) there's certainly the public demand at peak periods for SpeedFerries to offer more crossings and run a second boat.

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Categories: SpeedFerries, Ferry, France

Accident on the M20 meant a mad dash for the ferry

The first of our retrospective blog diary entries after a 2 week Easter holiday break in our Brittany Gite ....

As we've been travelling across to France fairly regularly for the last few years and now know how long it takes to get to the different ferry ports, we've ended up cutting it increasingly tight with our arrival at the port and usually end up arriving just before the gates close and driving straight on board the ferry.

For this holiday we were taking our dog to France for the first time and we were booked onto a fairly late (6pm) Speedferries sailing so we allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to the port from home and (unusually for us) actually left home early. All was going well and we would have arrived at Dover about an hour early until soon after we joined the M20 when the traffic ground to a halt.

And stayed halted.

And then didn't move at all.

Dialling up the traffic news on my mobile we were told "4 miles of stationary traffic on the M20 due to an earlier accident, severe delay, avoid".

Not good advice when you're already in the traffic jam !

So we sat there in the queue and didn't move at all for nearly 2 hours. We watched the air ambulance come and go, read a book and thankfully didn't play "I Spy".

When we finally did get moving and passed the accident (two lorries that had collided with each other) we were still 40 miles away from Dover and it was already 6:10pm so it wasn't looking good. SpeedFerries told me that they were running about an hour late so we might still be able to catch our boat if we "got there as fast as we could", but if we didn't make it then the next crossing with any space on it was on the 9th April (i.e. 10 days later!).

Sped down the motorway at warp factor 4 and arrived at checkin just about 15 minutes before loading started.

As I blogged a week earlier, SpeedFerries have moved into new (dedicated) facilities at the old Dover Hoverport but unfortunately we were in too much of a hurry to stop and really take a good luck at them:

SpeedFerries new Dover check-in

Surprisingly our dog didn't even get a second glance at check-in, they didn't check his 'Dog Passport' nor read his microchip. All that happened is that we were given an orange windscreen tag instead of the normal green one and we had to queue in a different lane with the other doggy cars. We then all had to load the boat last and with our hazard warning lights flashing (presumably to tell the crew that we had animals on board). My wife was very worried (and tearful) about taking the dog over but when we came down to the car on arrival in Boulogne he was curled up asleep in the car boot - obviously not phased by the experience at all.

Getting out of Boulogne port was a real pain though. If you pass through the main Dover ferry facilities all the customs controls are done on the UK side and so we've been used to driving straight off the boat in Boulogne (or Calais on the odd occasions we've taken a P&O boat) and straight out of the port. With SpeedFerries move to separate facilities at Dover Hoverport then this doesn't appear to have been replicated yet. Consequently we all had to drive (slowly) past the French customs man who of course didn't look at our passports at all but nevertheless there was still a considerable queue to get off the boat and through the port.
Can only hope that this is one thing that SpeedFerries look to sort out soon but they'd only swapped over to the Hoverport 2 days before we went through so doubtless this was just teething troubles.

An uneventful drive down the autoroute to the Gite, arriving about 3am in the morning (Zzzz).

PS: I have to admit that the photo of the new SpeedFerries check-in was actually taken on the return journey back home as we'd been in too much of rush to do it on the outbound journey. I was also told off for taking it, apparently it wasn't allowed - not sure why though?

Speedferries open in Dover Hoverport on Thursday

Received today a press release from SpeedFerries announcing that they're opening up their new facilities in Dover Hoverport on Thursday (29th March).

We're off to France ourselves on the Saturday 31st March so we'll see for ourselves their dedicated check-in. Blogging will be suspended for two weeks over Easter as we're taking a well earned break in our holiday Gite. For the first time we're taking our dog as well so that'll be even more of an adventure with the pet passport.

SpeedFerries new facilities at Dover

Here's the full text of the press release:

Dear Customer,

Please allow me to take a few moments of your time to pass on some important SpeedFerries news. I am really proud to announce the opening of our new fast ferry terminal in the Dover Western Docks, known as the Hoverport. From this historic place where the mighty Hovercrafts used to take off we have constructed a facility which I find to be the best possible ferry port. Ideal from our operational perspectives and ideal from all service and convenience perspectives. The first sailing from the Hoverport will take place 6 days from now on 29th of March 2007 at 07:00 a.m. Please remember to go to the Hoverport next time you are travelling on the Dover-Boulogne service.

“none of this would have been possible without the unique support of our customers”

It is no secret that strong forces have done a lot to prevent SpeedFerries from establishing a solid presence in the cross-Channel market. For good reasons, I guess: The prospect of a 50% faster, 50% cheaper ferry concept did not appeal to the competition. Nevertheless, the SpeedFerries operation you will now see operating successfully from our own ports, far away from the traffic and the ships of other ferry companies, is a reality. However, none of this would have been possible without the unique support of our customers. I will never forget and I will remain forever truly grateful to you.

“a final opportunity to top up your stock of SUPER Vouchers before prices increase”

I have been told by several frequent users of the Dover-Boulogne service that we have not done enough to keep our customers updated on the development in relation to the new port facilities. So, this is part of the reason for sending you this communication. Another reason is to give our frequent travellers a final opportunity to top up the stock of SUPER Vouchers before prices increase this Tuesday. SpeedFerries’ ticket prices were raised a few days ago, however, prices on Vouchers remain at the reduced level for another few days. The Vouchers come from £19 per trip (18-trip voucher) but for just £144 you can secure six crossings at a fixed price of £24 per leg including the many SUPER Voucher benefits. Please take advantage of this offer as prices are not likely to be reduced again subsequent to the upcoming increase.

“it’s now goodbye lorries and goodbye freight ferries”

As the Port of Dover is getting increasingly congested, landside as well as seaside, this move to the Hoverport, closer to the M20 and away from the ever longer queues of lorries, is really good news. So it’s now “goodbye lorries and goodbye freight ferries”. While refurbishing the Hoverport we have also taken the opportunity to upgrade our facilities in Boulogne where you will now also park just in front of the ferry and right next to the Gare Du Terminale.

“a direct connection from motorway to motorway at twice the freight ferry speed”

The easy and convenient access to SpeedFerries’ exclusive port facilities in both Dover and Boulogne connecting the M20 directly to the French A16 motorway will be very efficient. On most of our ticket types you would only need to arrive thirty minutes prior to departure and with a crossing which is now just 50 minutes you will be able to beat even Eurotunnel on the travel time for most of France. SpeedFerries offers a direct connection from motorway to motorway at twice the freight ferry speed.

“new historic café concepts and new land based lounges”

During the coming weeks and months three new historic café concepts and new land based lounges will emerge. The (Hovercraft) Engine Bay Café in the Hoverport, the Jervis Bay Café onboard and the Orient Express Café will open, partly as catering facilities, partly as small museums celebrating the famous past of the historic buildings and the craft we are using for the service. On top of this, new Premier Class lounges will open in both ports in July and the Premier concept onboard will also be upgraded.

“priority check-in and priority lanes for customers using SUPER Vouchers”

In the Dover Hoverport as well as in Boulogne there are now priority check-in and priority lanes for customers using SUPER Vouchers or the previous 10-trip Voucher. Subject to availability this will include priority loading and discharge. SpeedFerries will build on these offers and constantly improve the service to frequent travellers.

“a free Premier Class upgrade is included in Vouchers bought before this Tuesday”

Last, but not least travel on a 12 or 18 trip voucher before 1 July 2007 will include a free upgrade to Premier Class, subject to availability. The free Premier Class upgrade is included in all 12 and 18 trip Vouchers bought before this Tuesday the 27th March. However, as a permanent feature SpeedFerries will, following requests from many customers, introduce a discount for Premier Class upgrades for Voucher holders. This concept is planned to be introduced around the 3-year anniversary of the Dover-Boulogne service in May. Please find all details at www.speedferries.com.

“once again my sincere personal thanks for your support”

I would like to end this information letter by once again extending my sincere personal thanks for your support. I will do my very best to live up to your expectations.

Kind regards,

Curt Stavis