No resolution has emerged over the moorings in Kingsbridge. There is anxiety about the basin taking on the impression of “a crowded marina” so making it less attractive, and concern to maintain the continued use of the ferry steps at the head of the estuary. The Harbour Board’s proposal that the ferry could take on its passengers from what it saw as the safety of the car park seems to have gone down like a lead balloon.
Another ferry controversy which flares up from time to time is at the other end of the Harbour: the evening ferry service to East Portlemouth. The ferry company will not run in the evenings, it is believed not least because their insurance company will not provide cover for evening runs when many of the passengers may have been drinking. The Harbour has, however, been willing to provide a “weather dependent” service using the yacht taxi. That introduces an element of uncertainty about whether a service will run, and this is the problem. The ferries are specially designed flat-bottom boats with a sacrificial strip to enable them to operate without damage in shallow water and against a sloping slipway. The yacht taxis are designed to provide a service between yachts and a pontoon, have deeper draught and a bilge keel, a high freeboard, no protective strip and are so easily damaged by the slip and sucking up sand into the engine that the Board has stipulated that two members of staff are required to land at East Portlemouth. The high freeboard also complicates the boarding of passengers who may have been drinking (and let’s put to one side the abuse which staff can receive as a result).
So not only does the weather have to be right but the forecast has to be right so that the additional staff can be rostered for the yacht taxi. There are bound to be occasions when one or other turns out wrong, and that is when the emails fly. For as long as the ferry company won’t operate in the evening, I fear there will be no solution to this. And, no, the Harbour can’t get a boat like the ferry for use in the evenings: my understanding is that, although old licences can continue, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will no longer provide a licence for this type of flat-bottomed low-freeboard vessel.
Fortunately, and as far as I know, in the middle of the Harbour, all is uncontroversially peaceful.
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