P & O Express

[seashaw]

Unfortunately due to work commitments, I could not take the boat to France as planned, so we went for the day on P & O ferries. We came back on the Express catamaran thingy and even tho it was quite foggy, we did not seem to slow down. We did sound the foghorn a few times (but not a lot, three times I think), which was accompanied by a change of course. (i.e. it seemed they only sounded the foghorn when they had a contact on radar and would need to change course). We got back about half an hour late which they blamed on strong tides. This seemed a bit strange on a neap tide weekend on such a fast boat when the maximum tide against us would be about 2 knots. I wondered if this was p & o standard excuse a.k.a. British Rails leaves on the line excuse.

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[duncan]

It would be nice if they slowed down and felt comfortable advising passengers that they were a little late as they had slowed down for the safety of the numerous small craft in the channel on a weekend.

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[oldharry]

Hmm - I dont see much difference in safety between 35 knots and 20 knots in 200 yards visibility personally. Even the conventional ferries are a risk batting along at 15 - 18 knots in vis so poor you can barely see the jackstaff on the bows, as happened last time I crossed the Channel by ferry.


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[vyv_cox]

We returned Hull-Rotterdam two weekends ago on a P&O conventional ferry. Skipper predicted late arrival at Rotterdam due to adverse tides but in fact he made the time up and we arrived on time.

On the outward journey we left Rotterdam two hours late due to horrendous traffic jams in the Europort approaches but still arrived on time. Seems to be a good reserve of speed in these ships.

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