Cricket's blazer glory

SARK Shipping's booking office has moved to the Maseline Harbour and there is now a small waiting room.

The company has also computerised its ticketing system to show the traveller's name and the time and date of sailing.

Chief Pleas-appointed director Julie Mann said a new database has also been installed which will allow the ticketing system to automatically apply discounts to Sark residents if or when such deals are introduced.

Julie, who has been a Sark Shipping director since November 2008 - firstly with Robert Taylour and latterly with Colin Smith - said that the move to premises closer to the vessel and the ticketing system meant that in terms of the company's administration 'there's not a lot left to do'.

The company recently announced that in the year ending September 2010 it made a net profit of more than £230,000 and at the last sitting of Chief Pleas, Finance and Commerce chairman Stefan Gomoll told members that Sark Shipping had repaid £50,000 of its outstanding debt to the legislature.

On the face of it - and I say that simply because I'm not an accountant and have relatively little business experience - that situation appears to be a quite remarkable turnaround within less than three years.

While passenger numbers have registered a relatively small increase year on year from 2008 - just over three per cent annually and totalling 47,266 last year - freight business has increased substantially.

In 2008, the company's vessels carried 5,797 tons and the following year this increased to 6,454 tons.

However, last year - probably due principally to the huge amount of building work being carried out in Sark, primarily on hotels - this increased to 10,269 tons, a rise of more than 75 per cent over the 2008 total.

At a recent public meeting in Sark - the company is wholly owned by the people of Sark and such meetings are held annually - Mrs Mann disclosed that freight rates had not risen since the beginning of 2009. She said that this was a conscious decision by the company as it was felt that leaving rates where they were for such a length of time would benefit both Sark residents and visitors in some way.

However, she added that the company is currently carrying out a full review of the classification of goods and the charges levied on them. She went on to assure residents that if changes are made then ample notice will be given.

The company has also taken over the ticketing and check-in operations for the Manche Iles service to and from Jersey and Julie told me that this is being handled using current staffing arrangements.

Speaking as someone who uses that service, I'm pleased that this will lead to closer liaison between the two operators so as to avoid arrival and departure times clashing - an end, hopefully, to one vessel sloshing about in the swell outside Maseline while the other disembarks and embarks passengers.

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Sark's cricketers are now the proud possessors of official club blazers - thanks to the generosity of an anonymous benefactor, one of those people, I suspect, to whom many are grateful and who always seem to come up trumps whenever there is a need.

They were handed out after last Saturday's match against Cranfords Cricket Club - a 30-over match in which, sadly, the home side was beaten by something of the order of a hundred runs.

No matter. If it was as enjoyable to play in as it was to watch then it was worth the experience.

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Not for the first time, I've been taken to task in the online comment section of this newspaper, this time for my assertion last week that it is unacceptable for the 'Sark is different' excuse to be trotted out in relation to Chief Pleas running two Conseillers light for the better part of two years.

Are these critics really saying that such a situation is acceptable?

* The email address for comment is fallesark@sark.net