Ferries are meant to be our lifeline service.

• From desperate hoteliers and businesses losing millions to delays, to the pensioner who can’t even visit his sick wife – how years of SNP neglect have left an island community in despair

On a sun-baked Friday evening in late April, a folk song’s spirited chorus drifted out of Bar Beag at the far end of Tobermory and across the Sound of Mull.

A long weekend of merrymaking was well under way for those lucky enough to have made it over to Mull for what has been dubbed ‘the world’s best free festival’.

The plans of others, however, had been thrown into chaos after their ferry tickets were abruptly cancelled leaving fans and performers scrambling for a different way to cross from the mainland.

Some battled on and headed over on another boat after a long detour, while others simply gave up and went home.

The main route’s usual ferry, the 960-capacity MV Isle of Mull, had been deployed at short notice to head off a CalMac crisis elsewhere in its woefully overstretched network.

Tobermory has been badly hit by CalMac’s ageing fleet

Chris Wayne-Wills, chief executive of owner Crerar Hotels  has had over £500,000 of cancellations

But while a number of music-loving day-trippers may have had their hopes of attending the Mull Music Festival dashed, they were not the biggest losers on an island wholly dependent on its ferries.

Because islanders are watching their livelihoods fail through no fault of their own – and they know things will get worse before they get better.

‘It’s a complete nightmare,’ said Emma Denovan, who recently reopened the old MacDonald Arms in Tobermory with partner John McCrone. ‘We have really focused to be open in time for the music festival.

We had one of the bars refurbished and tarted up the second bar, so it’s a right kick in the teeth that the ferries are letting us down.

‘We have spent £2,000 on drink, which has just been delivered, and we need to shift it as it is not on sale or return.

We also need day-trippers after the music festival. Everybody is in the same boat: hotels, pubs and restaurants.’

It is an unfortunate turn of phrase, given everybody on Mull would give their eye teeth to have reliable access to any kind of boat from ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne’s creaking fleet.

In all, seven CalMac ferries have been placed out of action at various times in the past week, leading to disruptions and delays on sailings to both Craignure and Fishnish on Mull.

Given the annual Mull Music Festival provides a £500,000 boost to the local economy, the timing could not have been worse.

The 37-year-old MV Isle of Mull was itself recalled to dry dock for a second time in less than a year after it was found to require extensive repairs to rust on its hull. CalMac conceded that its delayed return from Aberdeen early this year caused ‘some challenges’.

For those trying to build their businesses on the island, it’s the uncertainty that’s the killer. If tourists start to doubt whether their ferry will turn up, they won’t either.

Not so long ago, Mull was a hotbed of toddler tourism with up to 5,000 visitors as day thanks to the children’s TV programme Balamory. Now, Tobermory’s familiar, cheerily painted row of houses by the harbour feel like they are masking despair. Hope is already draining away.

Further south lies the Isle of Mull Hotel and Spa, close to the main ferry terminal at Craignure, just 45 minutes by boat from Oban.

It has undergone a £3million upgrade in recent years, but has witnessed a ‘noticeable reduction’ in footfall on the island, with the hotel’s restaurants, bars and spa all suffering.

‘In the last year we have had over £500,000 of cancellations… the provision of ferries and the reliability of ferries has been the major factor in all of these,’ said Chris Wayne-Wills, chief executive of owner Crerar Hotels.

‘The ferries are such an issue that even our ability to recruit people has been affected, as candidates are concerned about not being able to get home at short notice if required.’

He added: ‘We invested millions of pounds into this hotel and created a world-class business. The fact that our main issue in operating it has been the ferries is a damning indictment on those responsible for the ferry service and investment into the fleet.’

Certainly, the effects of CalMac shuffling its pack of depleted resources around the islands have proved catastrophic for day-to-day life on Mull.

On that islanders are as one. It has resulted in last-minute cancellations, reduced-capacity sailings and scuppered travel plans.

Tourists can’t come and islanders can’t leave. For businesses, deliveries don’t arrive and stocks dry up. Life grinds to a halt. But that is what happens when the fleet is ageing and failing, there is no spare capacity and no new ferries ready to replace the old ones.

John Wilson, 94, has lived on the island for 70 years and has never known a service so poor. The former councillor relies on the boat to take him to medical appointments and visit his wife in hospital in Oban, where she has been for the past seven weeks.

‘In the 21st century one would have expected a more streamlined and modern service, rather than the third world service that it is now,’ he said.

Increasingly, holidaymakers are fed up with how late CalMac publishes its summer timetables, according to Billy McLymont, who deals with more than 4,000 bookings a year at the Shieling Holidays campsite and self-catering accommodation he runs at Craignure.

‘People need the confidence to book accommodation in advance but there’s always that element of doubt that they may not get a reservation on the ferry,’ he said.

With no air link like Tiree or Barra or a bridge to fall back on, Mull is completely at the mercy of CalMac. ‘So I guess our friends on the already overrun Isle of Skye will benefit from our troubles,’ he added, glumly.

Colin Morrison, who runs the Turus Mara boat tour company, agreed. ‘If visitors see it as difficult to access Mull they will simply vote with their feet and go somewhere else,’ he said.

The ferries are so enmeshed in island life that when they don’t run smoothly, everything is upended. Colin Craig, managing director of bus operator West Coast Motors, said unreliable ferries were impacting on his ability to keep bus schedules on track and were ‘causing immeasurable reputational damage’ to his company.

Many residents have sympathy with the ‘public-facing’ CalMac staff. Only 3,000 people live on Mull and almost everyone knows someone who works at the company.

They all know stories of ticketing staff in tears as furious passengers converge on them after missing sailings and say many staff are close to quitting.

Yet, islanders are equally furious that repeated incompetence by SNP politicians and others responsible for buying new vessels have left them and their families cut off and their businesses and employees high and dry.

For years, they have been braced for the coming storm as the CalMac fleet aged and Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd, the state body that owns the vessels, procured highly questionable replacements.

The long overdue Glen Sannox and its sister vessel, the newly launched Glen Rosa, are cases in point.

At least six years late and expected to cost quadruple the original £97million contract, they are both now due to serve Arran. It’s anyone’s guess when Mull will see new ferries.

In his idle moments, Andy Knight might imagine he could do a better job of assembling them, having built up one of the biggest construction firms on Scotland’s west coast from the family firm started by his parents in 1979.

Now, 45 years on, TSL Contractors Ltd finds itself at risk, with cancelled crossings costing the company a six-figure sum every year.

Like so many others on the island, he relies on the lifeline ferry services to deliver and receive supplies and transport workers to and from the mainland.

At first things worked well. ‘As we expanded, the implementation of a frequent, modern, reliable ferry service allowed us to export our expertise, developed on the island, to the nearby mainland market,’ Mr Knight said.

A new ferry pricing structure, known as the Road Equivalent Tariff (RET), was also introduced which was designed to cut the costs of ferry travel, but proved a mixed blessing.

‘While RET made ferry travel cheaper, it meant capacity became challenging and there was no provision for additional vessels to assist with this,’ said Mr Knight.

‘The Scottish Government wanted to boost tourist visitors to the islands but failed to consider the consequences for the regular users.’

The effect on his business meant that rather than having a commuting workforce, they needed to have people stay on the island for a week at a time – which has led to increased costs of providing accommodation, meals and other expenses.

That might have been manageable had the ferries remained reliable. ‘In addition, the wasted time we have encountered, caused by lack of capacity, breakdowns, late changes in timetables, etc, is definitely costing us a six-figure sum per annum,’ he said.

For many, the impact is both personal and professional. Mr Knight’s wife Naomi, who is born and bred on Mull, worries that the younger generation of islanders, having seen their parents’ struggles, will flee to the mainland.

It could, she said, ‘result in the Highland Clearances by the Scottish Government’, the very people who claim they want to protect remote communities.

For Flora Corbett, too, the ferry problems affect every aspect of her life. As chairman of Mull’s only slaughterhouse, she said a lack of sailings almost forced the firm to close as it struggled to get fresh produce to its customers.

‘The inconvenience and cancellations we had last year almost finished our business,’ said Mrs Corbett. ‘We kill one day a week, and the vet is contracted to work between the hours of 8am and 4pm – we cannot operate without a vet present.

‘We had customers whose ferries were changed last minute to unsuitable sailings – either too late in the day or even on the next day.

We cannot afford to face this ferry nightmare again.’

As a parent, she witnessed the shambles first-hand when efforts to take her daughter to national equestrian competitions on the mainland foundered when no room could be found on board for the horsebox.

‘Last year almost every weekend I needed to go to equestrian training or competitions with my daughter who was representing the Scottish team,’ she said.

‘It was total chaos. All my bookings were either transferred or moved onto sailings that were totally unsuitable for onward timings and would also involve having to have an overnight in Oban on return.’

An added concern for residents is the soaring cost of building projects as mainland contractors have little option but to pass on ‘consequential costs’ of additional travel and accommodation due to last-minute ferry cancellations.

As Moray Finch, general manager of the Mull and Iona Community Trust, put it: ‘The ferries that are meant to provide our lifeline service are in effect strangling the life out of the islands.’

Even organisers of the Mull Rally, which attracts around 3,000 spectators each October and injects an estimated £1.75milllion into the economy, are looking nervously at the calendar.

‘In 2023 our numbers of competitors, volunteers and spectators were down, and we have established that the ferry issues were a direct reason for that,’ said a spokesman.

‘This had a direct impact on event and island revenues, placing pressure on its economic viability.

‘CalMac behaviour so far in 2024 has done nothing to give us confidence that this year will be any easier. Indeed the timetable for the period of the event has been delayed; many participants have already booked accommodation but have made no arrangements for ferries as a result.’

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Graham Simpson blamed SNP ‘mismanagement and negligence’ for a ‘scandal which is mirrored across Scotland’s islands’.

He urged ministers to speed up efforts to replace CalMac’s ‘ageing, decrepit fleet’ with new ferries that are value for money and delivered on time.

Islanders Naomi Knight, John Wilson, Moray Finch, Gordon Milne and Fraser McKenzie

All this comes at a tumultuous time for CalMac. Earlier last month, Robbie Drummond was removed from his role as chief executive by the ferry operator’s board.

The company said it understood the challenges islanders face when services are disrupted and suggested adverse weather and tidal conditions for a ‘significant’ reason why ferries are cancelled or delayed.

Transport Scotland said it is promising to add six new vessels to Scotland’s ferry network by 2026 and is currently looking for islanders to voice their views on its Islands Connectivity Plan which, among other issues, it says looks at improving the reliability of its fleet.

It said Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop had met island communities in recent weeks to hear first-hand the difficulties they are facing.

A spokesman said: ‘We are listening carefully to concerns raised by islanders and other ferry users and working hard to address these.

We expect CalMac to communicate and engage with those affected by disruption to ensure travellers are aware of available alternative services and that our islands remain open for business.’

They will need to act fast, or it may not be long before musicians arriving for the Mull Music Festival will be playing a last lament for the island and its people.

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