Travel Trident taking up prime maintenance space

Guernsey provides far more opportunity than most places for vessels to remain completely clear of the water for several days of maintenance at a time, because of our big tides. It’s called ‘neaping’, where a vessel dries out on a beach or slip at the top of a spring tide, and as the tides get smaller it can then stay well clear of the neap high water mark until the tidal range increases again a fortnight or so later.

What we lack is a decent number of places where this can be done whilst lying alongside a wall, which is essential for many sailing vessels with a single keel. This is a practice which has been carried out locally for centuries, yet is now virtually impossible to do, because most of the places where it could be done are blocked by vessels which don’t even need to lie alongside.

Travel Trident’s own vessels blocking the slip in the inner part of St Sampson’s harbour are a prime example of this. In the space they take up, several smaller vessels at a time would be able to dry out for short periods of maintenance, yet at the moment they can’t because Mr Wilcox’s vessels are allowed to lay up there for months at a time, whether or not they appear to be having any work carried out, when normally they would be plying the Little Russel, albeit on a winter schedule. It appears that the local boating fraternity is suffering the effects of Travel Trident’s rift with Herm Island Limited and is therefore unlikely to be very sympathetic towards Mr Wilcox’s complaints.

In the medium to longer term it would be beneficial to the island for proper, modern maintenance facilities to form part of the ports’ development plans, but in the short term it would be of benefit to many if Mr Wilcox could mothball his vessels elsewhere.

DAVID HERSCHEL

Peter Wilcox of Trident Charter Company Limited responds:

The correspondent is obviously unaware that the berths we occupy are strictly for commercial use only and therefore do not affect smaller vessels.

Facilities for smaller vessels, including larger yachts that he mentions, are excellent here – two boatyards, not including Beaucette Marina, have lift-out and storage facilities.

What we, the marine industry, lack is the ability to be clear of all tidal constraints for extended periods.

The reason the Crocq at St Sampson’s is so heavily used (by all island ferries) is mainly due to safe access and the concrete area to dry the vessels out on is the only area of its kind in the island and the only designated compound for refits.

All other options such as the careening hard are unsuitable for heavy maintenance work such as welding/grit blasting, lifting engines, etc, for health and safety reasons.

Trident works closely with the harbour and marina officers when planning annual refits and will willingly shift berths if required to do so.

The comment that ‘very little seems to be going on’ is not a fair reflection on the crew, skippers and engineers who have maintained these vessels to extremely high standards for many years. We would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate to your correspondent what repairs/modifications/essential maintenances have been carried out thus far this year.

As an aside, the island’s domestic passenger ferry industry has suffered from a lack of decent facilities for decades.

During these years the fishing industry has been provided with a dedicated quay with parking and safe access to vessels. The leisure industry has been provided with three marinas (Victoria and Albert causing major upheaval for passenger access to Herm ferries).

The cruise liner industry is the most recent recipient for first-class facilities, all created with alarming speed.

The Inter-Island Quay – which was built to serve all domestic passenger movements – struggles to cope with demand and now provides moorings for the RNLI. No qualms with the reason for this, they should have immediate access to their vessels, but this has had a detrimental effect on passenger movements. Manoeuvring in this area has become increasingly dangerous with various small craft moving around without attention to VTS instructions that might be directed at them.

Safe access to our own vessels is long overdue – we should not be climbing down wet ladders in the 21st century. Improvements are needed now.