Tourists can’t come. Islanders can’t leave. And life on Mull is grinding to a halt

Think you knew how bad the ferry crisis had become? This dispatch will leave you despairing of the wretched SNP Government’s failings

ON the car deck of the MV Loch Frisa, crew members set to work once more on the jigsaw puzzle that cannot be solved. There are, as ever, too many pieces and not enough places for them.

Trucks are guided to within an inch or two of the ones in front. Cars are squeezed in at odd angles, their occupants forced to devise alternative escape routes when their nearest door is blocked by the vehicle jammed in next to it.

When the deck can accommodate no more, the ferry ramp swings upwards and part of it clangs against the back of a truck. The driver is sought to inch it forward.

On the Oban quayside the jigsaw’s inevitable extra pieces sit forlorn as the ferry engines rumble. One of them is a Royal Mail van. Some days it never gets to make the crossing to Mull.

When we arrive at the island’s Craignure ferry port, I find no route across the car deck to get to mine. I eventually make it by crawling under the rear end of a lorry. Yet, as we roll off the ramp onto dry land, we know we are the lucky ones. In recent weeks countless bids to make this 46-minute crossing have failed.

Those booked on coach trips to Mull have learned to their dismay the vehicles are not allowed onboard. There isn’t room for them on the two small ferries operating between Oban and Craignure, while the route’s larger ferry, MV Isle of Mull, is deployed to head off a CalMac crisis elsewhere in the network.

Many have arrived in Oban to find their ferry oversubscribed – an apparent glitch in the new online ticketing system rolled out last week and ridden with bugs. With

‘If it carries on like this, we’ll have to close’

no guarantee of getting on subsequent ferries, some tourists turned for home; others headed to Skye. At least there is a bridge there.

But they were not the biggest losers this May – a month which one leading voice in the community described as the worst in decades for an island wholly dependent on its ferries.

No, the tourists may have seen daytrips or holidays ruined but islanders are watching their livelihoods fail through no fault of their own – and they know things will get worse before they get better.

At The Creel Seafood Bar in Fionnphort, the island’s westernmost village, Siobhan Cameron stares glumly at the empty coach bays. Normally nine or ten of them arrive here daily, each carrying dozens of potential customers.

Her business could not be better placed to attract them. It is yards from the spot where people queue for the short ferry hop over to Iona. But there have been no coach tours from the mainland all week.

‘I own this business now but in the last few days I’ve been thinking I’m better off just finding a job,’ says the 28-year-old. ‘April was even worse than this. It did not even cover the bills and wages. We made £17,000 last April and this April it was £6,000.’

For part of last month the MV Isle of Mull was deployed to fill in on a route serving South Uist.

Then it returned to serving Mull. Now it is back sailing between Oban and South Uist.

The effects of CalMac shuffling its pack of depleted resources around the islands have proved catastrophic for day-to-day life on Mull. On that islanders are unanimous. It has resulted in cancelled ferries, reduced-capacity sailings and scuppered travel plans.

Tourists can’t come and islanders can’t leave. For businesses, deliveries don’t arrive and stocks dry up. Life grinds to a halt. But that is what happens when the fleet is ageing and failing, there is no spare capacity and no new ferries ready to replace the old ones.

‘I know a lot of tourists have travelled up to Oban, not got on the ferry and just given up and gone somewhere else,’ Ms Cameron says.

‘We’ll give it another month and if it carries on like this, I think we’ll just have to close – or open on certain days, which is hard because I can’t give the staff all their hours.’

Across on Iona, she says, some businesses are already operating such a regime. ‘They’re opening only half the week to save money on staffing. It is heartbreaking.’

While Iona is the must-see attraction for coach parties travelling to the west of Mull, Duart Castle is the tourism jewel of the east. It is the seat of Clan Maclean, bucket list destination for Macleans the world over and home of Sir Lachlan Maclean, the clan’s 28th chief.

As the 80-year-old peers out from the windows of the 700-year-old fortress overlooking the Sound of Mull, he too finds his coach bays empty. ‘On the 13th we had two groups coming,’ says Sir Lachlan, ‘and they got to the pier in Oban and were told their buses couldn’t come on the ferry. They had booked to come to the castle, that’s how I know these numbers.’

He was forced to refund a group entry fee of £382.50. His refund total for May 15 was £144, for the 16th £367.50 and for the 17th £427.50. Doubtless those many dozens of coach visitors would have spent more money at the gift shop and café. That business was lost too.

‘A couple rang me and said “We went to get on our ferry and it’s

cancelled. They can’t get us on a ferry to Mull again today so we’re off to Skye”. Now, are we ever going to see these people again?’

The clan chief wonders aloud about staging a protest at the CalMac ferry ports. ‘Do you think it would work?’ he asks, genuinely interested in exploring all options.

The problem, perhaps, is the ferry operator’s staff are said to be at breaking point. Only 3,000 people live on Mull and almost everyone knows someone who works at CalMac. They tell of ticketing staff in tears as furious passengers converge on them after missing sailings. Some staff have either quit or are about to, they say.

For the ‘public-facing’ CalMac staff on Mull, there is sympathy among locals. ‘They have been having a terrible time,’ says Sir Lachlan, ‘but there were no managers to be seen anywhere. So where were they? Hiding in a toilet?’

His frustration is partly fuelled by fears for next month which sees the arrival of more than 500 people for the Clan Maclean International Gathering. ‘What are people who have come all the way from the Carolinas or California going to say when they get to Oban and they are told they can’t get on the ferry they have booked?’

A few miles away at Garmony, the Isle of Mull Rugby Club has just held its annual sevens tournament. Some mainland clubs cancelled because their coaches were not allowed to make the crossing. Others had to send their teams as foot passengers.

One member, Geoff Adams, tells the Mail the mini-rugby teams he coaches had to pull out of a tournament in Taynuilt, 12 miles from Oban, on Sunday because their bus was banned. The senior team, meanwhile, had league points docked because it could not keep its travel commitments.

Yet this barely scratches the surface of the chaos which, locals say, is a confluence of three factors. The first is their normal ferry is away. Indeed, on the east of the island, you can see it sailing past several times a day to and from South Uist. The second is a new online ticketing system described by islanders as unusable. And the third – nothing to do with CalMac – is Highland Council’s Corran Ferry across Loch Linnhe has been out of service for weeks.

That adds some 150 miles to the journey of those using a different CalMac service – the Fishnish to Lochaline route – to travel between Mull and the mainland.

Such is the geography of this western part of Scotland that motorists must now travel around two lochs rather than make a 500yard crossing of one of them.

On Mull, not so long ago a hotbed of toddler tourism thanks to the children’s TV programme Balamory, it feels like strangulation.

In its capital, Tobermory, a shop on the harbour front is selling toy ferries. ‘Working ferry boat guaranteed more reliable than our island ferry,’ says a sign in the window next to them. It is a rare morsel of humour in a place some here say is becoming a ghost town.

A few doors along, at Tobermory Bakery and Tearoom, owner Claire Noble says it feels more like winter than late May. And it is the summer season which is supposed to finance the quiet winter months.

Next year, many predict, will be even worse. With no new CalMac vessels coming on stream until late summer at the earliest, the fleet will be a year older and likely still less reliable.

‘I don’t even know if we’ll be here next year,’ says Ms Noble. ‘That’s 100 per cent honesty.’

She tells me of a friend’s wedding on the island scheduled for this weekend. ‘The band’s ferry booking has been cancelled, the humanist celebrant has been cancelled and the grandparent of the bride has been cancelled. It’s not what you want for your wedding.’

Over at the Tobermory distillery, Olivier MacLean, who runs its visitor centre, reels off his catalogue of cancellations. ‘For May, I can tell you right away we are missing out on at least £10,000,’ he says.

Equally worrying is the visible strain on the faces of those tourists who do make it across. ‘They are already frustrated. I would say they are coming in in a worse mood.’

The danger is of Mull becoming associated in their minds with a sclerotic ferry service which casts a pall over the visitor experience.

Mr MacLean adds: ‘I know of hotel owners who are already seeing cancelled bookings for later in the year because people don’t know what fiasco lies ahead in July and August.’

One hotelier, Robert MacLeod of The Tobermory Hotel, tells the Mail: ‘What is being forced on us is horrific. The analogy is one of the Canary Islands which is used to getting a Boeing 747 every day and now they’re getting a Cessna. That is the constriction on trade. This is what we are experiencing as islanders and business owners who spend the close season preparing for what would normally be a very lucrative and successful summer.

‘We don’t have an air link like Tiree or Barra, so we are completely at the mercy of CalMac.’

Few are as painfully aware of the full litany of chaos as Joe Reade, biscuit factory owner and chairman of the Mull & Iona Ferry Committee. For years he has warned of the coming storm as the CalMac fleet aged and Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, the state body that owns the vessels, procured highly questionable replacements. The five years late Glen Sannox and sister vessel Hull 802 – now £200million over budget – are cases in point.

‘We are spending far too much money on the wrong vessels,’ he says – a view echoed across the Western Isles. ‘It is a strategic, structural problem that has been building for years where we have a dysfunctional ferry system and this mad situation where you have one company that owns the vessels and another company that operates them. There are so many reasons why that is just totally insane.’

While he acknowledges the difficulties in ensuring all islands are served while vessels are repaired, he says the online ticketing system was a CalMac own goal.

‘It was utterly bug-ridden. It cannot have been tested to any significant extent. On our route, for example, where you have got maybe eight to ten sailings in one direction in a day, it was only displaying five because there was a setting in the database which said the maximum number was five. Really? Had they not tested that?

‘The problem this week has been caused by overselling tickets. They are selling tickets for space that they don’t have. People who have been booked for months are being told “you’re cancelled” or “you are now on a waiting list” and there are 27 other cars on it.’

Last night, CalMac’s chief executive Robbie Drummond apologised for the disruption.

He said: ‘There have been some issues with the new booking and ticketing platform which is to be expected with a change project of this size and complexity.

‘My senior management team are meeting twice daily to progress and resolve any issues, as well as working closely with our supplier.’

Sailing capacity had been affected due to redeployment of vessels across the network and the MV Isle of Mull would come back into service ‘in the coming days’, he said.

‘We are working with an ageing fleet, with more than 38 per cent exceeding 30 years of age and increasing challenges around obsolescence and obtaining parts.’

On staff issues, Mr Drummond said: ‘Staff welfare is extremely important to us and we are grateful for their support and hard work as they adapt to using the new platform.

‘They have had extensive training and as familiarity grows for both staff and customers, we anticipate the platform to be a success.’

For now, success seems like a distant memory on this dispirited island with so much to offer.

For without the offer of passage, it is all for nothing.

‘Completely at the mercy of CalMac’

‘We are missing out on at least £10,000’