Alderney crane finally fixed

Wednesday 21 August 2019

Alderney shops will finally be able to fill up their shelves again, now that the island's harbour crane is back in action.

The crane had been out of order since last week, meaning no food shipments could be offloaded into the island.

Chief Executive of the States of Alderney, Andrew Muter, said it was all down to a part failure;

"The replacement part had to be flown from Germany and engineers had to be flown to the island. There has been some difficulty in removing part of the mechanism but this has now been resolved and the engineers are rebuilding the crane with the new part fitted." 

The island is dependent on twice-weekly cargo deliveries, one of which was due to arrive on Tuesday morning.

The delay left locals having to stock up on the limited choice available, with very few fresh items on offer.

If all goes to plan, the MV Valiant will carry out its regular inter-island delivery at the usual time this afternoon, and the Poole cargo will be sent over by the MV Shetland Trader at around 07:00 tomorrow.

Pictured: Alderney's Braye Harbour. Image from Chris George.