david

Would have been more suitable if it had been a timeout error.

I think 99 times out of 100, Aberdeen is the right port of call for the north boats. Generally speaking it's not usually a problem. Calling at Peterhead or Leith all year round would have its headaches. I think a ramp in Peterhead should be considered for the several times a year that they'd have to change port. They don't need huge terminal facilities, just a ramp. And as someone has already mentioned, if they knew Aberdeen was closed they could call in to Peterhead without having to linger outside the harbour, and probably have everyone bussed down to Aberdeen by around about the same time the boat was due to dock. You'd also not have such a wasted cost of repositioning the boat when things like this happens. I'm guessing the Hjaltland will have to sail from Rosyth to Aberdeen light ship to get back in place.

Where ever possible you don't want to use your UK contract phone as you would be able to run up a bill without really knowing how much you were spending. PAYG would allow you to see in real time how much everything was costing, however there would be a danger you would run out of credit and be unable to top up easily. Local sim card is the best bet. I don't know if you use your phone for data at all, but going across the USA for 6 weeks recently we used a local sim card and it meant we could use Google Maps, e-mail etc without the cost worry. If it was going to cost too much to get your phone unlocked you could opt to by a very very cheap PAYG phone once you were over there. I'm not sure how much they cost in New Zeland but in America you could pick up phones and sim cards for around $15 in places like Walmart.

Sunniva gun... getting some historic ship names in there. In theory sponsoring would be an interesting idea. It may work on the English channel but I can't really see many companies wanting to sponsor the Lerwick - Aberdeen boat. Despite the different spelling, I quite liked the idea that a Clare continued to call in Lerwick.

Can't fault Android's email capabilities. Gmail works like a charm and even Microsoft Exchange mailboxes usually appeared quicker on my phone than they did on my work pc. WebOS does look promising but it's probably at the bottom of the pile in regards to number of applications available for it at the moment? The new version of symbian looks nice. Will be interesting to see how well it performs.

I think I'm just so used to PHP that trying to take in Java is a struggle. But I will keep trying. Using eclipse yeah. I came across a program called Titanium Mobile from http://www.appcelerator.com/ There is a free edition and allows you to create Iphone and Android apps from javascript, css etc. It seems quite quick at getting something made and gives good results.

Android gets my vote. As someone who replaced my phone on a yearly cycle, I've had my Android phone over a year and it still feels new. Yes the Iphone has more applications, but Android is catching up and it has everything that you really need. It's also a fraction of the price.

I'm a php man and like to thing I am semi competent at it. Been trying my hand lately at programming for mobiles, Android in particular. Just can't get my brain around it. But I'm going to keep trying... David

As many on this thread have said before, and in fact various posts on this thread are a fine example... Northlink are damned if they do and damned if they dont. Personally, I trust Northlink to make the call. If they aren't sailing then I personally believe there is very good reason. I understand the master of the ship makes the call, no one else.

Being hand cuffed on a boat reminds me of that scene in Titanic where the water is rising and Kate Winslet has to use an axe. The Norrona has a prison cell on board. Could never work out if it was for rowdy passengers or for transporting prisoners.

the old sea dog in you is correct. Pretty much every vessel was stuck in or outside Aberdeen, not just the Northlink ferries. So it has nothing to do with the design of the boat as such in this case. Had the trusty St Clair still been on the route she would have been stuck too. I think it has just been bad luck over the last 10 years than the situation has got worse. Either through coincidence, global warming, I'm not sure. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I think if we got the Clair and Sunniva back on the route, despite being against all the SOLAS rules and the fact one of them no longer exists, I think the residents of Orkney and Shetland would be in for a right shock.

It would add on at least 5 hours steaming time at a reasonable speed. So either you'd have people complaining that the journey is too long, or you'd have to go at a speed so fast that the cost would defeat the point. And it would have to be Rosyth rather than Leith as Leith doesn't have ro/ro facilities and is hampered by the tides on a daily basis. And Rosyth isn't Edinburgh. It is pretty much useless for foot passengers.

The boat grounding, which is what would happen if it tried to leave in low tide and south easterly gales like there have been the last few days, would cost quite a bit to amend, and giving their already stretched budget I don't blame them for sailing late.

Would quite like to see that. When does she usually go through Yell Sound? I think it's very much dependent on what port she's calling in Denmark. Hanstholm is further north so she heads to the north of Shetland. Esjberg is further south so she tends to use the Fair Isle channel. She's dropping both Esjberg and Hanstholm in favour of Hirtshals in the coming weeks, so I'm guessing she'll be up towards the north of us again. Then it very much depends on weather, tides and which captain is at the helm. Yell Sound is probably more a summer than winter thing. But a Sunday afternoon is probably your best call.

Back in the day before every company had their domain name it was possible to make a bit of money. Now a days I'd say there isn't a massive opportunity to do it. It would be a lot of hard work, you also have to register a lot of domains to hope that one of them pays off. Personally, I wouldn't waste your time. But you can register domains at a heap of different sites. I use www.123-reg.co.uk £10ish for 2 years of a .co.uk £10ish for 1 year of a .com

Kristiansund was identified as the a main port because there is lots of freight in the north of Norway that at the moment has to travel by roads, roads that aren't the best quality of roads. There was (is) European funding available for a "motorway of the seas" that could take freight from Kirstiansund to the UK and continental Europe. I think either Rosyth or Newcastle was the choice of port in the UK for the Kristiansund link, and calling into Lerwick would only have added a couple of hours steaming time onto the journey. I still think the only way it will ever happen is if Northlink get this ropax vessel. Even if they only ran a Norway link for 6 weeks a year I think it would work.

I think todays piece in the Shetland News about a potential replacement for the Clare is the closest we've come to a possible Norway link yet... http://www.shetlandmarine.com/2010/08%20Shipping/NorthLink%20investigates%20ro-pax%20service.htm It's the only way Northlink could possibly provide a service to Bergen and while it may not be up to the standard of service that Smyril provided, it'd do.

With the current contract Northlink couldn't provide a Norway service without an extra ship as they are contracted to provide a nightly service (excluding weather/dry docking). Giving that cost cuttings would have to be made, if in a new contract they lost the Pentland Firth route then I'm sure the Hamnavoe would be sold.

I'm all for a Lerwick - Bergen link, we used the Norrona every year between 98 and 05 but I can't see it happening wth Northlink in the current setup. Northlink are needing to save money, not spend more. They need to reduce calls to Orkney without using the money to invest in another route. There would also need to be a Lerwick - Aberdeen round trip taken out so the boat could go to Bergen, which I could see a lot of people not being in favour of. The only way it would work was if Northlink chartered an extra boat during the summer. One that could provide extra trips on the Aberdeen Lerwick route meaning everyone could get a cabin. It could then head over to Bergen on one of the days. But that would cost money, something nobody has. The Norrona continues to sail right through Yell Sound every week. Another attempt to convince Smyril on the summer months only? None of those ridiculous 2 calls a week in the middle of winter. That's where it went wrong. But Smyril dropped Bergen as well as Lerwick and as soon as that happened they went into profit. Did Lerwick Harbour trust not just upgrade the Holmsgarth pier as well? Allowing bigger vessels to tie up? What's their thinking there?

Saw a stray comment from someone on Facebook a few days ago suggesting that there may be wi-fi on the boat now.

Was speaking to my dad about this yesterday, he'd noticed the higher than normal number of jets passing overhead. Pointed him in the direction of www.flightradar24.com . He could see the jets out the window towards the west and then see them on the map flying considerably further west of Foula towards Faroe. Interesting site to watch the paths the jets take.

Sorry Muckle, I'm not going to trust your judgement on this one. A Shetland resident on a Shetland forum with 926 posts vs Jane from DENVER with 1 post. Jane surely is the correct one in this thread?

I'm sure they weren't lying on Sunday night. They would know how long it takes to do the trip up on 2 instead of 4 engines without having to "test" it.

Am I right in saying that the Clare is on a deal similar to the Hildasay, so all the crew on her are Clare crew rather than Northlink crew? And being registered in Oslo, presumably a higher percentage of the Clare's crew are Norwegian? Maybe the plan is to replace the Clare with a boat using Northlink crew, and that's where the Hascosay crew will end up in the long run. The Hascosay is still laid up in Kirkwall at the moment, the deal to sell her fell through, so presumably she still has a skeleton crew (including skipper) on her at the moment.

He's got orange and yellow in him. We're both right