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The view from Lochinvar: party of the century from the Commonwealth Flotilla

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Yesterday, 26th July 2014, was about a great river – the Clyde; about boating and commercial maritime business; and about people – so many people.

CalMac’s newest ferry, MV Lochinvar, led the Commonwealth Flotilla of around 250 boats from the muster at Greenock to Pacific Quay, opposite the SECC and the Hydro.

It is unlikely that, from whatever viewpoint any of us saw this magnificent salute to the Clyde, we will see anything like it again. The multitudes who took that opportunity yesterday were unprecedented. The City of Glasgow, Scotland’s engine and unarguably Scotland’s heart, is hosting  – splendidly and happily – 71 Commonwealth Nations in the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The Games events included this unprecedented tribute to the home river – and who was going to miss it?

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Innumerable thousands came out to see the flotilla mustering, on passage up the River Clyde and on its arrival at Pacific Quay.

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There was virtually no accessible inch of the Clyde that people had not got themselves into. Where there was room and reasonable access, there were hordes.

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Where there wasn’t, there were small groups, with a picnic or a few cans, in vantage points they had chosen for themselves. They all wanted to see the Commonwealth Flotilla come by. Watching all of this from the platform of Lochinvar was intriguing and often breathtaking.

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There were waves and shouts from fleet and shore acknowledged by more waves and shouts – with Lochinvar hooting away. The flotilla was a mobile party parcel passed on from one group to the next, all the way up the river.

The muster

As the fleet mustered off the Albert Dock, the variety was fantastic fun – everything from motor to sail, from modern to classic, from serious to mock-serious to openly daft. We saw a Canadian flag on one yacht, one ecumenical yacht that appeared to be flying the flags of all four home nations.

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The muscle was Lochinvar in the lead, followed by two of Clyde Marine’s charter and cruise fleet, Clyde Clipper and Cruiser [above]. They’re based in the Albert Dock – exiting it in some style and with marked seamanship. Clipper came out astern – and fast, to take up station alongside Cruiser which had come out bow first to queen it over the flotilla of smaller sail and motor boats.

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There were two big classic sail boats, Misty [left] and the corporate hospitality charter yacht, the 70 tonne Kommandoren [right] – rescued by Oban lifeboat a week ago, on 20th July, after losing power in the Firth of Lorne. Both went through the lifting Millennium Bridge at the end of the passage, to berth rafted-up outside the BBC, below Bell’s Bridge [above].

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Challenge Wales appeared behind the Ocean Youth Trust Scotland, waving gigantic daffodils.

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One of the small boats, Ceale, was crewed by a collection of exotic onesies.

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A mid-size cruiser had a party group on board, with hospitality the order of the day.

The RYA were there, of course, organisers of the event and to the fore later at and outside the Princes Dock during the marshaling of the fleet to berth. Drum was there, now a charter boat owned by Arnold Clark and carrying echoes of rocker Simon Le Bon, who commissioned her for the 1985-85 Whitbread Round the World race – and saw her sheer her keel during a trial run in the 1985 Fastnet race, avoiding potential tragedy through timely and efficient intervention by the RNLI.

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The message that the crowds for the flotilla were going to be massive came at once, with the waterfront at Greenock, in front of some of its proud civic buildings and at the Albert Dock – heaving.

The passage to Pacific Quay

A stentorian hoot from Lochinvar – repeated regularly for audiences along the river – announced ‘Le depart’. With the flotilla slung out behind as far as the eye could see, we set off in stately, almost dreamy, progress into the River Clyde, Helensburgh visible off to port.

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Then came the unique and mysterious Dumbarton Rock which held, variously, the medieval Robert the Bruce and around two centuries later, Mary Queen of Scots [both, coincidentally, dying at the age of 45]; and, had an early plan been implemented after almost another two centuries, Napoleon would have been imprisoned there instead of on the Isle of Elba.

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Just upstream of Dumbarton Rock, we could see coaches and crowds at Dumbarton’s Levengrove Park for the Scottish Championships, the last major before the World’s at Glasgow Green on 15th and 16th August.

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On the curve of the river to the Erskine Bridge were a series buoys marking the navigation channel. One would attract a premium price for accommodation if it were, say, in the Thames.

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Carol and Henry Jagielko from Portavadie [above] were aboard, cheerfully claiming Lochinvar as ‘their’ ferry. Lochinvar – the second of CMAL’s serially awarded new hybrid diesel-electric ferries, leased by CalMac with the CMAl fleet in delivering its specialist lifeline ferry services to the Scottish west coast islands and mainland – has not long started her day job on the Tarbert to Portvadie route.

Henry has a rich personal knowledge of the River Clyde, identifying many of the lesser known landmarks on the way – like the single malting that is left at Bowling as a reminder of the Littlemill Distillery; and the support structures in the river further upstream at Bowling that used to carry the jetties for the giant Esso petroleum storage tanks, long gone.

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There were people at the Old Saltings on the port side before the Erskine Bridge. There were more below the pillars that support its great height from either bank. There was a chain of watchers and wavers across the entire bridge deck.

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A little further upstream, there were more on the northern slipway of the old Erskine ferry that the bridge replaced and further on, just west of Scotstoun, the slip for the still active Yoker-Renfrew passenger ferry.

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During the passage, Lochinvar caught up with a single kayaker before the Erskine Bridge. He kept pace with the boat all the way to the junction with the River Cart that comes down through Paisley. One of the  fleet-marshal inflatables then sped to have a word. The paddler was probably only aware of Lochinvar on his port side and had no idea that looming up behind him was Clyde Marine’s hefty Cruiser and the biggest flotilla the Clyde has seen. He was shepherded further inshore.

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The flotilla cruised on round the bends in the river, unstoppable.

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Then there was the Rothesay Dock, with the 10 acre, 75 tonne boatlift at Clydeport’s new River Clyde Boatyard in Rothesay Dock East, a regeneration project; and on past Braehead, below, the shopping and leisure campus, with new housing on its perimeter and river walkways – all crammed.

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On the north bank, the paddle steamer Waverley, below, said to be the last still working, was berthed as a platform for spectators to watch the flotilla- enough to give her a bit of a list as they crowded to the river side for the best view. Her presence demonstrated to everyone that she had not ‘snubbed’ the flotilla in favour of a commercial charter;  but  was indeed not a member of it because of the risk in close quarters traffic from her sometimes variable steering as a paddler.

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Upstream of the Waverley was an Argyll familiar, at the centre of a large shoreside crowd – the Vic 32 Clyde Puffer,  below, hooting a salute – whose home base is the canal basin at Crinan.

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At the King George V Dock on the Clyde, on the starboard side between BAE Systems at Scotstoun on the portside and its facility at Govan, a large bulker was berthed beside its entrance – the Federal Yoshino, Canadian owned, flagged in the Marshall Islands. A crew member on her starboard deck, below, gave us a big wave. At 18.15 today. 27th July, she was on her way south through the gate of the Firth of Clyde.

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A few weekend workers at BAE Systems got themselves into a position to see – and record, below – the flotilla.

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One section of the second new aircraft carrier – the Prince of Wales, is loaded on the world’s second biggest barge, AMT Trader, waiting to be towed off round the north coast and south to Rosyth on Monday 28th July; and another section is already well under way, too big to be wholly contained in the construction shed. The Govan yard is likely to close when it has has completed its contract on this second carrier, in favour of development at the cross-river Scotstoun facility.

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At Clydebank and College West there were dense groups along the bank and another group at the base of the mighty Titan Crane – with two figures just visible through the lens on the public viewing gallery at the top.

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At the Jubilee Hospital, nurses and other off-duty staff and visitors came out to line the bank.

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There was – appropriately – a wraparound mass of people [above and below] at the waterfront Transport Museum, designed by Zaha Hadid; with the tall ship, Glenlee berthed outside. Some were even sitting on the old steamer slip. [The Riverside's miniscule cafe will never have coped.] Opposite the museum, at riverside homes just off the Govan town centre and near its historic Old Parish Church, were more crowds, four or five deep. lining the walkway above the water.

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And at the riverside apartment blocks on the north of the river – as back at Braehead too – there were tiers of balcony parties so well peopled that you hoped the flats weren’t gerry-built.

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While passing the riverside apartment blocks the flotilla was ‘buzzed’ by two drones, presumably loaded with cameras – quite a strange experience and a taste of things to come.

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Then – Pacific Quay itself – where the big commercial boats berthed, with the Princes Dock behind it set aside for the large yacht fleet, efficiently marshalled to raft up in trots.

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Here was the crowd caught in the photograph below, facing Lochinvar as she came in to berth – all waiting for the flotilla, which swung across the river, above, into the throat of the Princes Dock.

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CalMac speaking for itself and dealing with the unexpected

Before we left the Lochinvar – where, en route, the tannoy had provided a well judged occasional commentary on features along the Clyde – the company reminded their guests of CalMac’s depth of knowledge and expertise, amongst which was the deceptively simple truth: ‘We know every port on the west coast’. And they do. You can neither buy nor sell the depth of this accumulated and embedded knowledge.

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In a notoriously complex set of routes and ports, with a wide variety of sea and berthing conditions, CalMac also has the well-schooled three dimensional chess capacity it takes to rejig a section of the network timetable to cover a route whose vessel has gone out of service with a technical problem. Islanders complain when they don’t get their full diet of scheduled ferry services but there is no real argument in some destinations losing part of their normal service in order to keep a sister island supplied with a lifeline service.

The Scottish Government’s Finance Secretary, John Swinney, was quietly on board with his family for a private day out with the flotilla. He will have heard the company speak for its worth. The huge contract for the Clyde and Hebridean  ferry services network is going into the tender process this year. Mr Swinney will have observed first hand – and experienced before – the organisational capability the company has and also delivered to the flotilla project – with every one of Lochinvar’s crew and CalMac’s additional onboard staff impeccable in the unflustered way they dealt with some curve balls the day threw at them.

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At Pacific Quay, the police refused to allow Lochinvar to disembark her passengers – on health and safety grounds. There was a prolonged impasse. It emerged that the problem was not with the Lochinvar or its 100 passengers but with the fact that the police already had what they felt was too many people on the quay. They had, of course, known that the Lochinvar with the Cruiser and the Clyde Clipper were arriving and they knew the numbers that would be on board each. Their worry was that adding the combined number from the three boats to those already on the quayside was a potential public safety risk.

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The solid mass of people, second above, was the view from Lochinvar,coming in to the quay. However,  with the yacht fleet behind making is way into the Princes Dock, within minutes the crowd had substantially thinned as many, above,  followed the yachts round to the dock to watch the marshalling. Eventually the police recognised the reality and Lochinvar disembarked. There was patience and no annoyance – just quiet logic – in the way the company dealt with the situation.

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As we left, we were talking briefly to David MacBrayne’s MD, Martin Dorchester [right above], named earlier in 2014 as Public Sector Director of the Year by the Institute of Directors Scotland; and to its Communications Director, David Cannon [left above], whose son is in the Games’ closing ceremony.

Martin Dorchester’s business background when he came to David MacBrayne had been in retail and property services, although at one time he had been with Maersk’s Norfolkline. We asked him if he was now fully converted to the ‘shipping people’ business?

The answer was a smile and a shrug that said ‘not really’. ‘With me it’s not the boats’, he said, ‘it’s the service. If we didn’t care about the service we wouldn’t do half of the things we do’. The company’s more innovative and relaxed attitude to service since Dorchester’s arrival would seem to bear this out.

The Pacific Quay party and the Games venues across the river

Pacific Quay, around the BBC and the Science Museum, seems to be one endless party for the Games period.

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Passing the BBC HQ on the quay, a mysterious new wooden building appeared, surrounded by hoardings at ground level, masking it and preventing access. This – ‘these’ really, since there are two elements to ‘it’ – is a temporary BBC studio for the Commonwealth Games – a sort of flat pack structure that can be assembled, taken down, stored and put away for next time

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This is already ‘next time’. This studio was used by the BBC for the Sochi Winter Olympics. So now you know where the sports presenters are during the studio – as opposed to the venue – coverage you’ll be watching these days.

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Security had also just closed Bell’s Bridge [above] – and were directing confused visitors to the Games down to the Clyde Arc Bridge [the Squinty Bridge]. Asking about the nature of the problem, it was again the number of people on the quay – they said they had over 40,000 there. Were there to be an emergency, the police would have to be able to evacuate the quayside of this number at speed – so Bell’s Bridge over to the Clyde Auditorium [the Armadillo], being the nearest to the quay, was a sensible choice as a conduit to keep clear for use in this eventuality.

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Clyde Clipper was at peace now, with the Armadillo visible on the far side of the river; and across the Squinty Bridge, looking at the the Armadillo’ entrance, it has acquired a very attractive red face we hope outlasts the Games.

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Our congratulations to RYA Scotland and to CalMac for an event no one who witnessed it will forget and for a superbly organised passage led and conducted with a confident ease.

Martin Dorchester says: ‘It was a real privilege and honour to be leading the Commonwealth Flotilla and all of us on the MV Lochinvar were blown away by the number of people lining the Clyde and cheering us on. It was a wonderful experience and something we will remember for many years to come.’

Note: We also want to thank Jackie and Michael – on the way to a night out at Glasgow Green, who took time to reorientate a stray with no sense of direction in a Glasgow where diversions and barriers installed for the Games make the city oddly strange.


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