How a sailing gets cancelled, who decides, and why we would rather lose the day's takings.
Every morning at five somebody looks at the forecast, at the swell direction and at the water in the harbour, and decides whether the boats go. It is Zahir most days and it is never the counter.
The decision is not about whether the crossing is possible. Almost always it is possible. It is about whether forty eight people, some of them with small children, should be made to sit through it, and about whether a boat should be hammered across a chop for an hour to protect a timetable.
On a marginal day the answer is usually neither cancel nor carry on as normal. The skipper slows down. A thirty five minute crossing becomes fifty, everybody arrives dry and unbothered, and we take the delay. People sometimes complain about that and they are complaining about the right decision.
When a sailing is cancelled, everybody booked on it gets a message before six. Your ticket moves to the next available boat at no charge, or the money comes back in full, and you choose which. We do not offer a credit note, because a credit note is a way of keeping money you did not earn.
The late express is cancelled first and earliest, by five in the afternoon, so nobody is standing on a jetty in the dark waiting for a boat that is not coming. It is the smallest boat and it feels like it in any kind of sea.
If you are connecting to a flight, none of the above helps you, and that is the honest position. Take a boat that lands three hours before your flight. No ferry anywhere can promise you more than that.