CMAL stance after sinking of £800m ferry revolution is rubbished

The Scottish Government-controlled ferry owner has been criticised for a 'rubbish' stance over the sinking of an £800m scheme to create a Clyde shipbuilding revolution and solve Scotland's ferry crisis with a fleet of 50 catamarans.

Fronted by Stuart Ballantyne, a Scottish naval architect and chairman of Australian marine consulting firm Sea Transport Solutions, whose designs are used in around 50 countries, the Clyde Catamaran Group has had meetings with ministers over the new ferries built over 20 years in Scotland that would cost a fraction of those currently being built.

The consortium that also includes Peter Breslin, managing director of Govan Drydock, have said that despite discussions there has been no interest in taking the plan any further by either ministers or Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), the taxpayer-funded company which owns and procures ferries.

CMAL when procuring four new ferries to be built in Turkey decided to stick with monohull boats again rather than opting for double-hulled catamarans.

When revealed last year, it was asserted that the sunk project for 50 catamaran ferries for use by Scottish Government-owned ferry operator CalMac for the lifeline island services off the west coast of Scotland and for services to Orkney and Shetland would cost just £250m more than it would cost to build four in Turkey and at Ferguson Marine in Scotland.

CMAL responded saying that it was not anti-catamaran.

And they added: "What often goes unreported is that in geographies similar to Scotland, with comparable weather and sea conditions, medium speed (below 20 knots) catamarans are not a common choice for passenger / commercial ferry services.

"In fact, of the 435 ferries (passengers, cars and freight) operating from Dover Strait northwards, including the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Scandinavian fjords – only six are catamarans. There are good reasons for this. An important factor in vessel choice is compatibility with specific routes, as well as flexibility to meet vessel redeployment needs across the network. We will only ever order the vessels best suited to the routes and communities they are intended to serve."

CMAL responded to accusations of being anti-catamaran by stating that catamarans in geographies like Scotland are not common for passenger transport (Image: Newsquest)

Among those angered by the comments is Professor Alf Baird of the Clyde Catamaran Group, who was a member of the now defunct Ferry Industry Advisory Group that was set up by the Scottish Government to inform them of the way forward for ferry services.

The former director of the Maritime Research Group at Napier University responded to CMAL's comments by questioning the catmaran numbers and added: "This is the kind of rubbish they feed to ministers and civil servants".

He said that CMAL had failed to provide any real evidence to reject catamarans adding: "More often what you get is misleading nonsense."

He said the Scottish Government-sanctioned 'emergency' chartering of MV Alfred for use to and from Arran at a cost to the taxpayer of £1m-a-month proved that the "game is up" over resistance to catamarans.

"This is a £15m catamaran doing the work of CMAL's £150m+ Glen Sannox," he said.

Glen Sannox is one of two long-delayed vessels at the centre of Scotland's ferry fiasco with costs expected to almost quadruple the original £97m contract.

"The essential fact is that CMAL are still excluding 'proven' catamaran specs from their design and tender process which means they never actually test the catamaran's competitiveness against their costlier, heavy displacement monohull prototype," he said.

Joe Reade, chairman of the Mull and Iona Ferry Committee, said that even if the numbers produced by CMAL were accurate, it was wrong to make comparisons between vessels needed in the Hebrides with those that are needed on heavy traffic routes such as across the English Channel and the Baltic Sea.

"An argument that goes 'most ferries north of Dover are monohulls, so ours should be too' is highly simplistic and misleading.

"Comparing Hebridean ferry routes – where the largest vessels are around 100m long - with Baltic and cross-channel ferries where vessels are typically 150 – 200m long is misleading, and perhaps borne from ignorance.

"When considering lower-traffic routes and vessels in the 30 – 120m range, catamaran hulls tend to be more efficient. This is why island nations like Fiji and Indonesia are turning to medium-speed catamarans, because the ferry size required is right in the catamaran sweet-spot. In the Caribbean, Middle East, Australia and many other island routes, you will find medium-speed catamaran ferries, because the vessel size and capacity needed is best suited to them.

"Not only are catamarans well matched to Scottish island routes because the vessels needed are smaller, but they are ideally suited to the shallow harbours we tend to have."

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He said: "Catamarans are naturally shallow-drafted, and so no compromise to their hull form is necessary – they can be shaped for maximum efficiency without worrying about draft limits."

The draft is the distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull and indicates the maximum depth of any part of the vessel.

Mr Reade said that the shallow draft restriction of Hebridean ports was one of the reasons why CMAL have had such difficulty finding suitable ferries on the second-hand market – as most are too deep-drafted for the west coast.

"CMAL may claim that the ability to redeploy to other routes is important – but it seems not to have been a consideration in that case. A catamaran by contrast could very easily be used in a variety of ports – firstly because of the lack of draft restriction, but also because the wide design lends itself well to the geometry of all CalMac’s linkspans.

"Another aspect in which typically low-profile catamarans excel is wind-resilience. The biggest cause of cancellation in the Hebrides is not the size of the waves encountered on passage, but the strength of the wind when berthing. CalMac’s tall slab-sided ships are very vulnerable to high winds. A catamaran on the other hand presents a much smaller surface for a strong side-wind to take effect."

He added: "When CMAL claim not to be ‘anti-catamaran’, we should judge them by their actions, not by their words."

A CMAL spokesman said its catamaran research was carried out by international shipbroker Clarksons.

"While we recognise that there are many catamarans operating successfully across Europe, our statement specifically referred to medium speed (below 20 knots) catamarans, which can take passengers, vehicles, and freight, as these are the types of vessels required to operate across CMAL's network."

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