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Santander-Plymouth Ferry Cancelled |
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More than 2,000 travellers today had ferry bookings cancelled after a fault stranded Brittany Ferries’ £100 million flagship in port for a second day.
A cracked cooling valve on the Pont-Aven ferry had still not been fixed this morning, leading the company to cancel two scheduled sailings from Plymouth to Santander, Spain, and Roscoff, northern France.
On Tuesday, hundreds of holidaymakers who arrived at Plymouth for the fully-booked crossing to Roscoff were told to go to Portsmouth or Poole to catch other ferries.
A Brittany Ferries spokesman said today that passengers for Spain were being re-booked on services to France.
He added: “If they don’t want that, they can have their money back or be re-booked on a different sailing.
“We are doing everything we can, and we recognise that it is inconveniencing a very significant number of people.”
Around 1,800 people were booked on the 1pm crossing to Santander aboard Pont-Aven, he said.
A later sailing to Roscoff on a different ferry, which was more lightly booked, was cancelled because Pont-Aven is taking up the only berth at Plymouth ferry port.
A routine inspection on Tuesday uncovered the crack in a cooling valve on Pont-Aven, which resulted in around 1,200 tonnes of sea water flooding the ship’s engine compartment.
Firefighters and Ministry of Defence experts assisted in pumping out the engine room overnight, but Brittany Ferries engineers have not finished assessing the extent of the damage.
The 41,000-tonne Pont-Aven, the largest ferry in the company’s fleet, entered service on March 24. It carries 2,400 passengers and 650 cars. |
