Irish Ferries brings new Dublin Swift fast craft into sea

So, having had my travel plans well and truly blown out of the water recently, with a very late cancellation of the overnight Epsilon rotation on Aug 28th, did anyone hear what the "extraordinary" circumstances were that led to the cancellation.

My own guess looking at the delays and slower crossing times is that they had a major engine failure, at one stage, shortly before we had the text message about the cancellation, Ulysses was delayed coming into Dublin as Epsilon hadn't cleared the berth, then it was moving, but going in strange directions, and taking a lot longer than it was supposed to, it looks like they had to go to Holyhead to pick up spares, and then spend time repairing it while on the move, as it couldn't stay on the berth as they needed it for Ulysses. Either way, having to get to the port for the evening Ulysses sailing rather than the 0200 was not easy, and it seems they put the passengers from the Holyhead rotation on to Stena, but real information was sadly lacking.

The Ulysses sailing we were on was well full, I've not seen the drop down decks so full for a while, and it took a long time to unload at Holyhead.

It's not been a good summer for Irish Ferries, between the Ulysses being off line for several weeks, ongoing problems with the Swift not being swift, and then problems with Epsilon, I find myself wondering if they are pushing them too hard, or if it's a case of not doing maintenance that's needed. Whichever it is, I can't remember a period where there have been so many issues with reliability as there seem to have been this year.

The morning Swift from Dublin, and the afternoon one from Holyhead are popular with foot passengers who are then going on by rail, as they offer better connections if the distance involved is further than Chester.

Having said that, I find myself wondering if there will be changes when the second new large ferry for the Holyhead route comes on line, the Epsilon does not take foot passengers, which limits the options somewhat, and it was clear that it came on line as a stop gap, my own thoughts are that we may well see the Swift put down to Rosslare in the summer months to offer a fast link into Pembroke, as with only one ship on the route at present, there's no option for early mornings from Pembroke, or afternoons from Rosslare. I would not expect the Swift to operate on that route in the winter period, due to the weather implications.

In fairness to Irish Ferries, while they've had a bad year PR wise, the Ulysses has a very good record of operating in vile weather conditions when just about everything else was tied securely to the dock, a few years ago, around Halloween, it was the only ship operating for close on a week due to storms, but they managed to keep going on schedule without any real issues, we travelled on one of those sailings, and despite the weather, it was not a bad crossing.

The delay on the WB Yeats has clearly hurt, and the dockyard will I suspect be being hit for substantial penalties for their failure to deliver on time, unless the problems were caused by late specification changes, my instinct is that the delays were caused in part by the bad weather over the winter, which may well have caused problems with the delivery of some of the larger modules that were built externally and transported by barge to the final assembly dockyard, but there's been very little said in the public domain about what went wrong. What is for sure is that the next ship won't be coming on line so close to the delivery date, if they have their heads screwed on right.

The complete unknown is what's going to change as a result of Brexit. There is clearly a line of thought that goes along the lines of making sure that there are options for direct routes into France on a regular basis for significant quantities of freight, which is likely to increase if things go as badly as is being suggested by some parties. The possible implications to costs for Ireland if that happens are going to be a major concern, it's already a significant factor in the cost of both imports and exports, and if there are going to be delays in the UK that will be avoided by going direct to or from France, the additional costs of that change will not be small, all we can hope is that the EU will provide some support for Ireland to cover the costs that will adversely affect Ireland in ways that won't be affecting most of the rest of the EU.

In the worst case scenario, we might even see 2 large ships operating to France from Dublin, with Ulysses and Epsilon operating the Holyhead route, but that's very much speculation on my part without any numbers to back it up. As for what will be done with the Swift in that scenario, that's guesswork.

davidjtaylor wrote: »

Anyone know what the crack is with booking Irish Ferries in early January 2019?

Stena have sailing times but Irish Ferries comes up "No Sailings Found for your search criteria" for 2/1/2019 to 9/1/2019.

Which route, it's possible that there may not be any sailings due to ships being moved around during the annual maintenance periods, especially on the French and Rosslare Pembroke routes.

Tabnabs wrote: »

https://www.irishferries.com/uk-en/sailing-updates/dublin-holyhead/

Not having a good day, again...

Indeed, things seem to have gone very pear shaped today, and not all of it is weather related, and their web site is considerably less than informative.


On the booking side, I've asked the question, but so far, no one has responded, it seems that for some reason, there's no schedule up beyond the end of December at the moment, which would be unusual. If/when I get a response from them, I will post it here.