Red Funnel disruption to Isle of Wight to continue for week

The company is running a revised timetable on its car ferry service until August 9.

An issue with the voith unit on vessel Red Eagle means the cross-Solent operator has had to cancel a number of forthcoming sailings.

Today, on what is the Cowes Week finale, Red Funnel is predicting 'significant' disruption.

A spokesperson said: "With a reduced timetable in operation on an extremely busy day, we are expecting significant disruption to our service.

"We are therefore asking many of our customers to arrive later than originally planned, as their sailing will be departing later than expected.

Some scheduled sailings are set to be delayed by hours. Tonight's 5.30pm sailing from East Cowes is not expected to depart until 10.30pm.

A spokesperson added: "Our teams are working closely with the voith manufacturers on a repair plan."

It is latest in a long line of recent disruption to the service.

On Wednesday night, eight scheduled sailings were cancelled due to the same issue.

And yesterday (Thursday), the ferry operator announced further cancellations due to a sewage system issue on board Red Osprey.

At one stage, vehicle ferry services were running with 'delays of up to three to four hours'.

Leanna Lakes, operations director, said: "Despite adherence to our maintenance programme, a key component within the vessel’s forward propeller system (Voith Propulsion unit) has unexpectedly encountered a fault.

"This has occurred well short of the of the unit’s predicted running hours. We are working closely with the team at Voith to diagnose and resolve the problem; however, this will require time.

"We will issue another update once we have more information and a clearer understanding of when the vessel can return to service. In the meantime, we sincerely apologise for any inconvenience to our customers’ travel plans.

"Our technical team is committed to doing everything they can to restore Red Eagle back into service as quickly as possible."