The grounding of the Scillonian III yesterday in St Mary’s harbour looked more dramatic than it was and there was no major damage caused.

That’s according to Harbourmaster, Dale Clark, who praised the professionalism of the boatmen and shore staff, including the crews of the Pegasus, the Hurricane and the Lyonesse Lady, as well as the quay hands on shore.

Recounting yesterday’s chain of events, Dale says the Scillonian made a normal approach but the strong northwesterly wind caught her stern, which was recovered by the Captain.

She pulled out and made a second attempt to berth but the same thing happened and unfortunately this time she couldn’t be caught. Dale says the boat ended up contacting some moorings before scraping the bottom in the low water.

St Mary’s Harbourmaster, Dale Clark

Two buoys were damage and there was some very minor damage to one vessel.

Dale said it looked dramatic but the recovery was very controlled.

He says it could have been a lot worse, as the Scillonian is a big boat relative to the other vessels in the harbour.

Divers went down yesterday afternoon to check the hull and propellers but they didn’t see any sign of damage.

The ship left as scheduled at 4.30pm.

Dale says there are always lessons to be learned after an event like this and his office will be working with the Steamship Company to review the incident.
 

PCSO Shirley Graham (right) and PC Faye Webb

This year’s 999 week for students from the Five Islands School has been the best ever. That’s according to PCSO Shirley Graham, who helped coordinate many of the activities.

It’s the sixth year that the weeklong course has been run as part of the Citizenship component of the National Curriculum.

And Scilly’s unusual hands-on approach, with training being delivered by the different emergency services on the islands, has won plaudits from Ofsted, who described it as “learning at its best” and “powerfully real for the young people involved.”

Shirley says this year’s group of 19 Year 9 pupils, unusually 14 girls and 5 boys, were an “absolute credit to the school.”

She says they took in every little bit of the course and threw themselves into all the activities.

That included searching for people in a smoke-filled room and in the bushes around the lifeboat station using a thermal imaging camera with the fire crew, and learning CPR techniques with Tony Smith from the Ambulance Service.

The youngsters also had to search for a missing elderly person (this year played by Maggie Perkovic) by going around shops and businesses in Hugh Town.

Shirley says the Police deliver sessions on domestic abuse, drug and alcohol addiction and matters relating to the law, such as how the Crown Prosecution Service works.

She said she wanted to thank this year’s group for their hard work and is looking forward to the second half of the course, delivered on the mainland, this autumn.

And Shirley says she can’t see any reason why the programme won’t continue next year.

The Five Islands School Football club has been given £1,900 for a weekend of professional coaching from the Foxwell Shilton Soccer School. The children, as well as adults who volunteer at the Club, will take part in the training weekend on the Garrison later this year.

A £1,655 grant to the Sailing Club will allow them to bring over a RYA instructor to train new Club instructors. It will qualify them to teach children and young people, and instructors will also receive refresher training to update their current knowledge and skills.

2014 sees the Centenary year of Girl Guiding and a £150 award to the 1st Isles of Scilly Brownies will pay for the purchase of special centenary merchandise, including ties, woggles and badges.

The girls are currently fundraising to visit the mainland and take part in the celebrations next year, where they’ll wear their commemorative attire.

The Scillonian III will sail back to Penzance this afternoon at the scheduled time and is still expected to make the double sailing to and from the islands tomorrow.

Divers have inspected the vessel and given her a clean bill of health following her grounding this lunchtime.

203 passengers were left stranded on-board the ferry for over an hour when she ran aground in St Mary’s harbour. The boat was attempting a second go at berthing alongside the quay when it was hit by a strong northwesterly gust.

She came into contact with other vessels including the Kingfisher, although damage is superficial. But that boats mooring and the fishing boat Vicky Anna’s mooring have been lost, possibly after contact with the Scillonian’s propeller.

The Harbourmaster’s boat Pegasus, the Lyonesse Lady and the Bryher jet boat, Hurricane acted as tugs and repositioned her alongside the quay.

St Marys Harbourmaster Dale Clark has paid tribute to the professionalism of boatmen and locals who worked together to avert damage or injury and who dealt with the problem in a calm way. Dale asked St Mary’s police to breathalyse the master, which is standard procedure. The reading was zero.

Dale says the Captain was intending to retreat to The Roads and wait for the tide to rise before a third attempt to dock, but the gust took hold before he could leave the harbour area.

It was just a combination of tides and wind that caused the problem, Dale says.

Passengers waited patiently onboard and many of them only realised something was wrong when the boat stopped moving for a long period.

The Steamship Company has issued a statement saying at no time was there any danger to passengers. They have apologised for the delay in berthing.

The fire service received a number of 999 calls from islanders concerned by the appearance of thick black smoke drifting over the town.

Fire Control in Truro even received one call from a worried off-islander.

Firefighters wearing breathing apparatus used two hose reels and water from a hydrant at first, then began pumping water to form a jet to bring the blaze under control.

They were stood down just before 11pm.

The area is used for rubbish storage and there were reportedly some small explosions because of chemicals caught up in the blaze.

The cost of the damage has not yet been calculated.

But whatever happens with the cash-strapped airport, the Chief Executive of the Steamship Company, Jeff Marston, says Skybus will rise to the challenge.

Yesterday Flybe announced they were selling their Gatwick landing slots to Easyjet, which means their London to Newquay service will end next March.

Skybus work closely with Flybe who will continue their Exeter routes.

Jeff says he had no prior warning that the service will end. He says the loss of a service into the southwest is disappointing but the route did not appear to increase Skybus traffic to the islands.

He says Scilly’s niche service nature, and our runway constraints that require smaller planes, means Skybus “isn’t on the big boys’ radar” and that protects our service.

The loss of the route could cost the loss-making Newquay airport over £500,000 a year. It’s still open only because its owner, Cornwall Council, subsidises it to the tune of over £3m a year.

Newquay airport Managing DIrector Al Titterington says there are two airlines interested in the route but Skybus’ Jeff Marston hasn’t heard who those are.

Airport spokesperson Sarah Burke says she doesn’t expect any changes to the level of service provided by Newquay Cornwall Airport to Skybus or general travellers.

We asked Julian Pearce of the Council’s Tourism Department for his views.

In a statement we were told that the Council remain positive over the future of air links between Scilly and the mainland and they will continue to work with the relevant bodies on the mainland, including those at Newquay airport, to seek continued improvements for air travel to the islands.

They added that the Council is working with the Steamship Company to access funds to harden Land’s End runway.

St Mary’s Health Centre

The campaign group FRIST has been defending the accuracy of the data used in a report highlighting travel issues faced by islanders last winter, after claiming that flight disruption caused the cancellation of surgeries at St Mary’s Health Centre.

In the bulletin sent out to members this week, FRIST claims that the Health Centre had to close on the 14^th November because there were no doctors on Scilly able to provide cover. They say they were told that two GPs waiting to fly in from the mainland, one waiting to fly out and one unable to work because they’d been on duty all night.

The report has been sent to senior policy makers, including local MP Andrew George.

But that allegation has been disputed by doctors.

Lead GP, Dr John Garman says there has clearly been a miscommunication because at no point over the winter has the Health Centre offered less than a full quota of doctors due to  weather.

He says on the day in question, he and Dr Hessing were due to fly to the mainland for a course and two doctors were flying in to cover them. As there was no flying they cancelled the course and worked as normal. All surgeries ran completely as planned that day, says John, including one on St Mary’s and one on St Martin’s.

FRIST advisory group member, Marian Bennett, defended the data, telling Radio Scilly that the report is accurate and she would “swear in a court of law on it.”

Marian claims she was informed by the Health Centre on the morning in question that they would be closed, but says the problem might have subsequently been resolved. And she admits she should have followed up afterwards to verify they did stop surgeries.

She’s since informed Dr Garman that she will remove that paragraph from the report.

Marian says all the information has come from actual islanders suffering real problems, even though their names have not been released, and she says some data wasn’t included because it couldn’t be verified.

The FRIST report highlights a number of problems faced by patients this winter, including the cancellation of 27 local clinics run by visiting consultants, people being placed at the bottom of hospital waiting lists because they missed appointments on the mainland and the high cost of taxi transfers from Newquay to Treliske.

Waste management site at Moorwell

Scilly’s Chief Planning Officer says there’s no need for concern over a formal document sent to Pilot’s Retreat and Jackson’s Hill locals about the Moorwell refuse site.

Some residents have contacted Radio Scilly to say they’ve had a letter advising that a Certificate of Lawful Use, for the continued use of the buildings on the dump and stockpiling of waste and ash, has been applied for.

Craig Dryden says it’s required simply to regularise the use of the site and to satisfy the Environment Agency that it’s been used for waste management for at least ten years.

Whether or not planning consent was granted when the site was extended in the 1960s doesn’t matter, he says, as long as it’s been used for that purpose for a decade. As part of the process, the former Chief Technical officer Brian Lowen has had to sign a declaration in front of a magistrate to state that Moorwell has been used over that period.

Craig says it means the application to determine whether or not the site has a lawful use will therefore be assessed on the basis of facts rather than relying on a planning judgement.

The Council’s waste consultants SLR are preparing a report on waste management in Scilly, although they haven’t revealed what recommendations they’ll make about Moorwell and the use of Pendrathen.

Councillors are set to receive their findings soon. Any proposals will still need to be approved by the Panning Committee and that’s why the authority is making sure all the paperwork is in order.

Isles of Scilly Museum

The curator of the Isles of Scilly museum has been flying the flag for our islands at a conference of coastal museums in Shetland.

Amanda Martin joined forty other curators at the UK Maritime Heritage Forum last week.

The group meets annually but postponed their 2012 get-together because of the Olympics.

Like many professionals in Scilly, Amanda is the sole paid employee in her organisation and she found it useful to share ideas with her counterparts.

She says the Shetland Museum has fantastic resources including an excellent restaurant. It receives funding from a trust fund related to oil reserve money and Amanda joked that she’d like to bring back some of those ideas back to Scilly

But she also believes our own museum punches above its weight and does well for it’s size and tiny budget.

It was interesting to visit another remote island, says Amanda, and she saw similarities between our islands and the Shetland Isles, with a lot of people complaining about the transport links and prices and the problems getting freight delivered.