Condor Liberation taken out of service after technical issues
Condor Liberation has been taken out of service, after it had just returned from dry dock.
But Condor has been trying to make amends to get passengers to their destinations, ahead of the schools restarting today.
Passengers were left frustrated on Sunday, after the vessel departed Cherbourg for Jersey, but turned back to the French port, despite being off Jersey’s west coast.
Condor confirmed the vessel had suffered a technical problems and engineers were looking into the issue.
A sailing yesterday was also cancelled.
‘The cancellation of these sailings has been extremely frustrating and we sincerely regret the disruption and inconvenience caused,’ a Condor Ferries spokesman said.
‘Liberation had only just returned from planned maintenance in dry dock so we are working with the manufacturer, MTU, part of the Rolls-Royce Group, to investigate and remedy the problem as soon as possible.’
It was announced last week that the Clipper was going to be out of service yesterday for 24 hours due to needing essential maintenance, which saw a Portsmouth-Channel Islands rotation cancelled.
That work was not completed before the ferry had to be pressed back into service to the rescue of stranded passengers in Cherbourg yesterday.
It set sail from Portsmouth at 5.30pm on Sunday and sailed to France.
The journey took about 12 hours, which included about five hours of circling just south of the Isle of Wight, which was due to berth and pilot availability.
The Condor spokesman confirmed the ferry had been helping to move some of the passengers, while other passengers were transferred to Brittany Ferries services between Portsmouth and Cherbourg, and then transferred onto the Condor services to reach the islands.
The Condor Islander sailed a Portsmouth/Channel Islands rotation yesterday.
The Clipper’s repair work will now be due to be completed at a later date.
The schools are due to restart today.
The latest issues follow major weather and technical disruption last week, which saw supermarket shelves left bare of fresh produce for a couple days.
Freight sailings to the islands this week are unaffected by theses issues, as additional capacity has been scheduled on the Commodore Goodwill.
‘Our larger fleet now means we have more options for alleviating these situations,’ the spokesman said.
n Condor is re-routing its passenger ferries to Cherbourg this month, rather than St Malo, as the French port is closed until Monday 19 February for repairs.
The company’s freight sailings to St Malo will continue, as they are able to use the commercial port during this period.
The St Malo port is having repairs to its ramps and an upgraded terminal as part of a major project.
