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Sat 25th July

Stornoway Airport (Parkend access)

£5 admission

¼ MILE DRAG RACE

Stornoway Cruise

Dark time for Sunday sailing                                    18/7/09
 

It’s one way to avoid the Sabbath ferry scrum - get the ship to sail at an unearthly hour.

Cal Mac will come in the night time as the nation’s media slumber in Stornoway hotels. Hacks have gathered on Lewis to record the historic crumbling of the last bastion of Sabbatharism.

But the first sailing on the morning of the historic seven-day service will be in the early hours of Sunday. Around 4 am the MV Isle of Lewis will creep into Stornoway harbour and discharge her cargo of passengers and cars.

Cal Mac has already upset the press pack by making them wait hours on the pier head at Ullapool today (Sat) for the small MV Isle of  Arran to arrive on her back to back service. The extra TV vans and reporters cars adding pressure to the queue of vehicles the slower ship struggled to clear on her three crossings.

Some insistent editors will turf long-travelled reporters out of their cosy beds in the middle of the night to side-step revelers from the Hebridean Celtic festival and trundled down to the harbour.

The hacks will get their own back and make mention to the nation that Cal Mac failed to provide a decent six day service during its busiest 24-hours of the year.

Cal Mac boss Phil Preston insisted it was simply a “mechanical problem” and not devine intervention as hundreds of the the company’s customers were stranded.  Its thought about 2500 to 3000 people suffered holiday chaos as Cal Mac’s biggest ship broke down at the worst time.

The aging ship developed mechanical problems on Friday which caused her to abort two of her scheduled three runs.

The smaller and slower MV Isle of Arran arrived as her replacement on Saturday morning and operated 30 minute turnarounds to clear the build up of traffic.

However, engineers successfully repaired the engine exhaust fault on the MV Isle  of Lewis on Saturday. The aging ship is now ready for the official launch of regular Sabbath sailings to depart Stornoway at 2.30pm on Sunday.

But the ship will actually make an earlier Sabbath sailing into Lewis as she left at 10pm for Ullapool to pick up the last of the delayed traffic and will undertake the first Sunday sailing in the dark hours of the morning.