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Latest ferry news for April 2007

Date Source Title
20 Apr 2007Kent NewsP&O Ferries win award for on-board catering
12 Apr 2007Shipping TimesEaster Holiday boom for Dover Ferry Port
3 Apr 2007Cellular-NewsIrish Ferries getting GSM coverage at Sea
1 Apr 2007abcTroubled high-speed ferry finally sold

P&O Ferries win award for on-board catering

Date: 20 Apr 2007 Source: Kent News

Caterers at P&O Ferries proved they have the recipe for success by winning a prestigious award.

P&O is the first ferry company to clinch the On Board Caterer of the Year title at the annual awards of specialist business magazine Cost Sector Catering.

"We've never entered these awards before and to win at the first attempt is a huge achievement," said head of food and beverage Mark Frost, who collected the trophy at a ceremony in London's Hilton Hotel.

Judges were particularly impressed by P&O’s Best of British campaign which seeks out the highest quality local foods

Cost Sector Catering editor David Foad said: "P&O Ferries stood out with a really interesting campaign that is very much in tune with the trend towards more local and seasonal produce."

P&O Ferries carries more than ten million passengers a year on its services to France, Holland, Belgium and Spain.

Food on board ranges from light snacks to a la carte dining in the floating version of the famous Langan's Brasserie.

Easter Holiday boom for Dover Ferry Port

Date: 12 Apr 2007 Source: Shipping Times

More than 235,000 passengers passed through the Port of Dover over the four days of the Easter holiday weekend.

Figures released by Dover Harbour Board today showed this was 7 per cent more than the 2006 holiday weekend.

The number of cars using the port’s services to Calais, Dunkerque and Boulogne also showed growth. Over 38,000 cars and 2,500 coaches travelled with P&O Ferries, SeaFrance, Norfolkline and SpeedFerries.

Over 10,000 lorries also passed though the port in what is normally a quiet weekend for the haulage industry.

Irish Ferries getting GSM coverage at Sea

Date: 3 Apr 2007 Source: Cellular-News

Maritime Communications Partner (MCP) has signed a contract with Irish Ferries to deliver GSM coverage onboard the MV Isle of Inishmore and the 50,000 ton MV Ulysses, the largest car ferry in the world. This follows the successful installation of MCP's CellAtSea service onboard Irish Ferries' MV Normandy on the Ireland-France route at the beginning of 2006.



Irish Ferries is Ireland's leading passenger/ro-ro ferry company. Both the MV Isle of Inishmore and the MV Ulysees provide passengers with daily sea travel between Ireland and Britain. The MV Isle of Inishmore sails between Rosslare and Pembroke. The MV Ulysees sails from the heart of Dublin to Holyhead and has the capacity to carry up to 2,000 passengers, 1,342 cars or 240 trucks.

For the passengers, the mobile services are transparent, readily available on their own personal mobile phone, operating seamlessly through MCP's network in the same way as when travelling abroad. MCP tariffs all calls, and handles the revenue flow generated by the networks, through industry standard billing and accounting systems. The customers are charged by their home operator through normal invoicing routines.

Troubled high-speed ferry finally sold

Date: 1 Apr 2007 Source: abc

A 55-mph ferry that zipped across Lake Ontario between Rochester and Toronto for eight months but spent much of its three years tied up in port may have found a new home in the Mediterranean Sea.

The city of Rochester said Monday it is selling the car-and-passenger catamaran to FRS, a German ferry operator, for $30 million. The sale, secured by a $3 million down payment, should be completed by the end of April, and the ship will ply the Mediterranean between Spain and Morocco, Mayor Robert Duffy said.

'We are getting a fair price and FRS is getting a great vessel, one that's in pristine condition,' he said in an interview.

The Spirit of Ontario, built in 2003 in Australia for $42.5 million, operated for 11 weeks in 2004 before getting tangled up in debt. The city bought it at auction in February 2005 for $32 million but quickly ran up more than $10 million in startup and operating costs. The project shut down service after just five months.

Duffy, the city's former police chief, put the ferry up for sale when he became mayor in January 2006. Last spring, he announced that Britain's Euroferries Ltd. had agreed to buy it for $29.8 million. But that deal unraveled 10 months later and he went looking for new bidders.

'The idea of having a ferry service certainly has merit,' Duffy said. 'I think the question is, can a government sustain a project like this financially? And the answer's no. At least not here. It was an incredibly complex decision with so many financial pitfalls and land mines along the way that there was no doubt that when I came into office ... that this was not a project the city could sustain.'

The ferry has been docked in Nova Scotia, Canada, since December, and the city still carries a $20 million debt to be paid back over 15 years.

Civic boosters hoped the 284-foot-long, five-story-tall vessel, which can load 774 passengers and 220 cars, would prop up tourism on both sides of Lake Ontario and ease traffic tie-ups along the Golden Horseshoe, the densely populated region along the lake's western shore.

The 171-mile road trip to Toronto usually takes three to four hours, and far longer when there are backups at the border near Niagara Falls. The ship got there in two hours, 30 minutes.

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