Month: January 2017
PR: Tipping point for Seatruck.
Records are tumbling on the Seatruck Ferries Warrenpoint to Heysham freight ferry service. 2016 saw the largest number of freight vehicles ever to use the twice daily service as the route achieved what is expected to be the largest percentage freight growth of any Northern Irish ferry service. 2017 has also started strongly with the largest ever number of unaccompanied freight trailers using the service in week 3. Seatruck specialise in the movement of unaccompanied trailers which helps transport operators to use both their equipment and drivers more efficiently. The recent opening of the Heysham M6 Link Road connecting junction 34 of the M6 directly with Heysham Port, at the other end of the Warrenpoint route is proving very attractive with operators who are now focusing on Heysham as a hub port for the Island of Ireland without the need for the lengthy transit through Wales or Scotland. The Warrenpoint ... Read more
P&O handle highest volume of freight since 2011.
P&O Cairnryan freight volumes recover. P&O Ferries have announced they handled the largest volume of freight in 5 years on the Larne to Cairnryan route during 2016. Some 206,700 freight units were handled on the route during the last 12 months, and increase of some 7.5% on 2015.  2011 was of course the year Stena introduced their Superfast twins on the competing Belfast to Cairnryan operation, and so P&O have now recovered their volumes to levels similar to those before Stena introduced their ‘new’ ships. 2016 was also the first ever year in which none of the 4,774 sailings scheduled from Larne was cancelled. 97% of those sailings departed within 10 minutes of their published time. Neal Mernock, P&O Ferries’ Director responsible for the Irish Sea, said: “This highly encouraging performance shows that the economy of Northern Ireland is continuing to grow, notwithstanding the uncertainty heralded by the Brexit vote ... Read more
Stena Horizon to arrive in the morning.
Stena Horizon to cover Stena Lagan and Stena Mersey on Birkenhead route. Stena Horizon left Rosslare bound for Belfast this evening, with arrival expected at around 9am tomorrow morning. She is expected to take up service on Wednesday evening, replacing Stena Lagan which will make the short journey across the river to Belfast Dry Dock for refit.  In the meantime, Stena Horizon looks set to be berthed at the Ship Repair Quay from Tuesday morning to Wednesday evening. NB: The above is taken from Marine Traffic and the Belfast Harbour website, and is of course subject to change! Stena Europe arrived in Rosslare earlier today, and is scheduled to return to service with the 09:00 sailing to Fishguard on Tuesday.  This will release Stena Nordica to operate the overnight sailing to Cherbourg in lieu of Stena Horizon which will be in Belfast covering Stena Lagan and Stena Mersey. Title image:  Stena Horizon arrives at Belfast for her 2016 dry-docking. ... Read more
In strange waters #2: Stena Line Irish Sea dry docking’s/refits 2017.
This page will be continually updated throughout the refit period which is expected to run until May 2017. Last years “in strange waters” can be found here. Please note that due to the nature of their content, both pages are very heavy in photographic material and may take a while to load on slower connections. Â The second part of this year’s feature can be found here. This year Stena Line will complete all Irish Sea dry docking’s at Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard, that’s a total of 9 ships from the fleet of 11. At the end of 2016 Stena announced that the entire fleet would be receiving the latest livery and strap-line “Connecting Europe for a Sustainable Future” during their scheduled dry docking’s, in a style similar to that applied to Stena Britannica recently. This replaces the previous “Making Good Time” strap-line. (Title image: Stena Europe in Rosslare displaying the ... Read more
Some changes in response to the unauthorised use of material on this website.
Following a regrettable incident where an article and accompanying images where copied verbatim from this site and posted to Facebook without any credit or acknowledgement to either the site or any of the photographers, I have taken the decision to watermark all images on the site.  In order to post this material to Facebook, the individual circumvented all of the measures already in-place on the website to prevent copyright theft.  The alternative to watermarking would be to either take the site down (something that I briefly considered given the theft of written work), which would defeat the object of establishing this website in the first place, or further reduce the resolution of the images displayed on the site. Considerable effort is put in to not only researching the articles on this site, but also securing the permission of the copyright holders of the images prior to their publication where applicable.  By copying ... Read more