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CalMac's charter of relief catamaran delayed

Pentland Ferries MV AlfredPentland Ferries
The MV Alfred will join CalMac's west coast network for nine months

The planned charter of a catamaran to provide extra resilience on the CalMac ferry network has been delayed.

MV Alfred, owned by Pentland Ferries, was due to be transferred to the state-owned operator early next week.

However, an older catamaran which the company intends to use on the Orkney crossing in its place, does not yet have a safety certificate.

CalMac said it expected the delay would be short, and it would not affect customer bookings.

CalMac confirmed last month that the Scottish government would fund the £9m cost of chartering MV Alfred as a relief vessel for nine months.

The operator has been plagued with a shortage of vessel capacity and frequent breakdowns, with three major ships currently out of service.

MV Alfred, an 85m-long catamaran, was built in Vietnam in 2019 at a cost of £17m as a replacement for an older vessel, MV Pentalina, which for many years had operated across the Pentland Firth.

Privately-owned Pentland Ferries had planned to return the older catamaran to service for the duration of the charter, but a number of issues have to be addressed before the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will issue a passenger safety certificate.

MV Pentalina
An older vessel MV Pentalina will return to the Orkney route once it has passed safety inspections

It said a shortage of available workers and dry dock time meant it had been unable to complete the work on time.

Managing director Helen Inkster said: "A very rigorous inspection of the vessel has continued over recent days and while we have been able to deal with the majority of issues identified in the inspection, there remain items that we cannot resolve in time for the vessel to return to Orkney this weekend."

CalMac's charter of MV Alfred was due to begin on Tuesday 18 April but the ship will now remain with Pentland ferries until Pentalina is ready.

The chief executive of CalMac, Robbie Drummond, said he was disappointed but that he expected the delay to be short.

CalMac plans to initially conduct sea and berthing trials before deploying MV Alfred on its routes, so no bookings or services have been affected.