- Condor Liberation running more than four hours late yesterday.
- Delays came just a day after returning to service following accident.
- Ship’s novelty safety ‘rap’ video attracting attention across the world.
- Fancy a look around the new vessel? See our video below.
CONDOR’S new £50 million ferry was running more than four hours late yesterday after suffering technical problems just a day after returning to service following an accident last weekend.
Specialist engineers were on board the ship this morning trying to fix a problem with a faulty engine valve.
- Condor Liberation is the companys 16th passenger vessel since it was founded in 1964
- It has a service speed of 35 knots (about 40 mph), which is faster than a great white shark, and its engines have the equivalent power of 50 formula one cars
- There are 33 staff working on the ship on each sailing
- On its maiden voyage from Cebu in the Philippines to Poole, Condor Liberation sailed more than 10,000 nautical miles across the Indian Ocean and along the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea over 22 days
- Each year Condor Ferries carries more than one million passengers and 200,000 passenger vehicles
The Condor Liberation, which was operating a double sailing between the Channel Islands and Poole, had been due to depart Jersey at 7.30 pm in order to arrive in the UK just before midnight.
However, following increasing delays throughout the day, the ship did not depart Elizabeth Harbour until shortly after 11 pm – docking in Poole at around 4.45 am today.
The company said that the ship’s on-board safety system restricted the vessel’s top speed after the valve broke.
In a statement yesterday, Condor said that engineers were working on the valve and that they hoped to have the Liberation back up to full speed as quickly as possible.
The technical problems follow a disastrous first ten days for the new vessel, during which it was out of action for over a week after striking a harbour fender in Guernsey last Saturday.
The resulting repair work meant that the Liberation did not return to service until Sunday, with the company bringing one of its old vessels, the Express, out of retirement to cover the busy Good Friday sailings.
The repairs were originally due to be completed within ‘a couple of days’ but that timetable was revised after work took longer than expected to complete, partially due to adverse weather conditions in Poole where the boat had been docked.
The Liberation was due to arrive at the Harbour at 6 pm today before departing at 7.30 pm and arriving in Poole at 11.30 pm.
THE JEP recently reported that Condor Ferries had come up with a novel way of delivering its on-board safety message on the Liberation – by rapping it.
To tie in with the ship’s mission statement, ‘good times’, the ferry operator said that the video, which shows actors portraying a captain and two members of staff rapping the on-board safety rules, aimed to make ‘every part of the customer’s journey as fun as the rest of their holiday’.
The video has since attracted attention across the world.
Australian news website news.com.au asked ‘Is this the most cringe-worthy safety video of all time?’, while the Mail Online pondered ‘Is this Condor Ferries video the worst safety demonstration of all time?’.
Meanwhile, there has been a mixed reaction on social media, with comments ranging from ‘very dated and cringey’ to ‘the best safety advice ever’.
The video was produced by Bournemouth-based production company Love Love Films.
The response on the JEP’s Facebook page
- Raymond Campbell: The best safety advice ever. Bravo.
- Maryjane Millen Swainston: Very dated and cringey. Ridiculous dancing is a distraction from important safety information. Totally awful and embarrassing and makes me wonder who comes up with these ideas? Makes us Jersey folk look like idiots yet again.
- Andy Jones: It is tongue in cheek, and gets the message across. Credit for them for being prepared to do it. How it reflects badly on Jersey people I fail to see.
- Richard Long: Brilliant. Well done Condor.
- Janet Corbett: Brilliant. All ferries note and follow suit.
- Simon Gascoyne: ‘Well…. It’s one way to get the passengers to completely ignore the safety announcement in lieu of their sanity.’
- Paul J Bentley: ‘Embarrassing and cringe worthy.’
- Gerard Farnham: ‘This is horrendous, who on earth thought this was appropriate?’
- Peter Brazier: ‘Have I just woken up in 1983?’
- Stephen Noel: ‘April Fool’s Day is next week.’
- Amy Jackson: ‘Is this actually for real? I’m traveling next week and I will be blocking my ears to this!’
