Community, Cancellations and a 25 year old ferry

Getting home shouldn’t be this hard

There are a lot of angles to choose from when writing an article about our ferry service, this one is just me feeling disappointed about today’s cancellation. It’s a beautiful clear day, occasional flurries of snow and a light but bitterly cold northerly wind, perfect sailing weather for our ferry, but today it has cancelled due to a technical issue with its propulsion control unit. Usually when it’s a technical issue, rather than weather related, the ferry operator looks for charter boats to cover the service, at the very least put on a foot passenger vessel. But not today, there was nothing available.

The reason for my disappointment? My daughter, 16, was supposed to be on the ferry coming home after a couple of days spent with a friend on an adjacent island, but now she is stuck in Mallaig for one or two more nights. The only redeeming feature is that she can stay at a friend’s house, especially so, as at this time of year there is so little accommodation open to stay in. I’m thankful her friends have been so obliging.

To visit her friend for two nights and return home, she had to take four ferry trips and spend four, now five or possibly six nights away. That’s pretty hard going. School also starts on Wednesday so that means she has to return to Mallaig on Tuesday afternoon on the school boat. Children of high school age on the Small Isles attend Mallaig High School, which has a purpose-built hostel/residence for them. They are away Sunday to Friday each week, it used to be that they only got home every other weekend, that’s what my older two children had to cope with. Every weekend is an improvement. To keep up friendships and attend events, they often are away for additional time and use the ferry for this, which means more planning and sometimes delays. It feels unfair sometimes that the young people are carrying a burden for living on an island that they shouldn’t have to.

Our ferry service is a lifeline service – there are no commercial boat services available that would make life here financially viable. We understand that the ferry cancels in poor weather. We have come to understand that the ferry service has more limitations now with greater regulation of health and safety and limits of crew working time. We also understand that our ferry is 25 years old and is due for replacement within the next five years. A consultation for this will be starting early this year. But, with this understanding comes frustration. When the communities don’t feel the ferry service meets our changing needs. And our changing needs don’t always fit within the Hebrides ferries operating structure. One size does not fit all.

Here’s why: The Small Isles are a bit different. We have one ferry for four islands, it runs four or five days a week dependent on whether it’s the summer or winter timetable but only once a day. Minimum ferry times can be 1.5 hours; maximum can be 5.5 hours if you end up going around all the islands to reach your destination. The Small Isles as a group used to be better connected, but with the ferry increasingly impacted by its age, connectivity has suffered – and consequently – our feeling of community frays quietly. We worry that this will only get worse, that island life becomes less viable; a new ferry will take up to five years to build and commission and in that time, our current ferry is only going to get older and less able to operate at its current level.

In the last few months there have been multiple cancellations for technical reasons. Before last year, a technical cancellation usually meant some rope had tangled around the propeller or similar, but recently it’s the propulsion units or pump failure or control systems, basically, a breakdown. The staff in the local ferry office try their best to help and they’re great to be fair, but they can only get replacement boats if they are available. Sometimes they are not the most salubrious either, but they get you from A to B safely. It’s making it more difficult to plan off-island trips with the worry that you might not get home when you plan to, or get away when you want to. We think a time will come soon when this impacts us financially as businesses and communities. We have already been financially impacted from the increased number of weather cancellations last year and further impact of a failing ferry could affect tourism on which a lot of us rely.

Don’t get me wrong, we love our ferry. Sometimes we call it the fifth Small Isle, it’s often the only place we get to see our friends on other islands. This happened before Christmas when I was delighted to bump into three friends from Eigg I hadn’t seen for an age, what a good chat that was. We’re also good friends with the freight and café staff and are on first name terms with most of the crew. It’s like a big family but a slightly dysfunctional one perhaps.

I am a member of the Small Isles Community Council, and we have monthly meetings with our local CalMac team to share concerns. Even with this level of communication, we don’t know what the short- or long-term solutions will really be. Much of the time it feels like we are firefighting, which can be demoralising.

The Small Isles are a vibrant, growing community. We see ourselves as solutions-based. We need our ferry service to meet our needs head on — to be proactive and forward-thinking — just as our communities have been, in order to make these islands the success that they are.