Feature 3 | FAST PASSENGER AND FREIGHT FERRIES Fast ferry futures?


Rising fuel costs and a reluctance from passengers and freight to pay a premium for rapid transit times has hit the fast ferry market, but Bill Moses, the former managing director at Hoverspeed claims that operators need to find the right niche to make the number crunching work, reports Sandra Speares


T


he current car carrying fleet of fast ferries, mainly catamarans, includes some impressive vessels,


but this relatively infantile sector of the passenger shipping industry has been fraught with a variety of challenges that has seen a number of vessels laid-up or discarded, comments Bill Moses. Te former Hoverspeed boss says that:


“Technological problems, to a large extent born of early prototypes, the rising cost of fuel and the corresponding unwillingness of passengers to pay a premium for faster crossings, has certainly hampered the sector’s global advancement despite some impressive examples. With the increase in size comes the


blurring of the line between fast ferries and conventional ferries that are able to travel


fast is one issue. “Take for


example Stena Line’s gas turbine powered HSS1500, a sturdy, 127m long vessel capable of 40knots with 1,500 passengers and 375 cars. No match perhaps in terms of sea-keeping for the conventional Superfast fleet that emerged in 1995, but with similar passenger capacity who could argue that the additional 10knots plus


would provide a competitive, potentially very useful edge? “Just as the Superfast fleet has


dispersed, so too was one of the HSS catamarans, Stena Discovery, was sold to Venezuela in 2009, although strangely for an oil producing country with operator subsidies it has been laid up ever since. Quite clearly very few vehicle carrying fast ferries are making money for their owners, the profit and loss graph on the boardroom wall having more to do with OPEC than commercial reality. “The conclusion is that speed and


exponential energy costs result in a costly formula that is dependant, almost entirely on the need to create a unique route, preferably without competition, such that passengers and perhaps even hauliers will be prepared to pay for the privilege of getting to the other side quicker. “The hovercraft succeeded despite its uncomfortable, noisy


ride with


windows you could not see through for spray, but remember this was at a time when conventional cross-Channel ferry operators were being blamed for their ‘cattle boat’ image. No wonder, perhaps,


that passengers were prepared to pay a supplement of about 22% at the time,” says Moses. “Te hovercraſt was a truly remarkable


invention and has never yet been surpassed in a number of ways. Take for example its ability to be turned around in just a few minutes, cars being loaded one end while incoming vehicles were leaving from the other. Its speed of turnaround and ability to cross at speeds of 55knots also influenced the amount of capacity that could be allocated to periods of high demand; hence Hoverlloyd operated seven daily return flights in winter and a maximum of 27 return flights, with four hovercraſt at peak demand, in summer - something that conventional ferry services simply could not match. “Regrettably they were not to last forever


and in the early nineties came the order from Hoverspeed’s parent company Sea Containers for five 74m so-called SeaCat catamarans from Incat Tasmania. Unfortunately, they were no match for the hovercraſt’s agility or reliability and soon attained nicknames such as ‘sick cat’ and ‘vomit comet’, names that although not without substance did nothing to endear the general public to these new


Hoverspeed’s hovercraft had real advantages, not least the fact that simultaneous unloading and loading offered rapid turnaround times says


106


The Naval Architect September 2012


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