Virtually every sailing on the Rothesay-Wemyss Bay route was either cancelled or diverted to Gourock last Thursday, with MV Coruisk tying up for the night after her arrival in Rothesay around 3pm and MV Bute doing the same a couple of hours later.

The weather caused even more problems for the Colintraive service, which did not run at all on Thursday, meaning that the island went without deliveries of newspapers, mail and groceries.

Once again Bute was far from the only island affected by the bad weather - sailings to Coll, Tiree, Barra, South Uist, North Uist, Gigha, Raasay, Arran, Cumbrae, Dunoon, the Small Isles, Skye, Berneray, Lewis, Harris, Iona, Mull, Eriskay and Portavadie were all disrupted.

Friday and Saturday were less of a problem, but Sunday's sailings were again cancelled or diverted to Gourock, with both ferries tying up early once again.

Monday morning started off well, with the first two sailings from Rothesay making it into Wemyss Bay, but the wind strength soon proved too much for both ships and Gourock became the mainland port of choice once more.

Fortunately the wind abated in the afternoon and the two vessels were once again able to berth safely at Wemyss Bay.

Rewind 24 hours to Sunday morning, and we watched with a wary eye as high tide approached and the waters of Rothesay Bay gave the Esplanade a thorough rinsing, though they didn't get high enough to test the flood defence wall.

According to the BBC's up-to-date tidal forecasts, however, the week's high tides at Rothesay were due to reach a peak of exactly four metres at 1.21pm on Thursday and 2.02pm on Friday.

CalMac issued a press release on Monday calling the recent spell of weather "possibly the worst in the last 15-20 years", with every route in the network disrupted in some way.

Bute Ferry Users Group contacted CalMac to raise a number of points about the disruption - several of which were mentioned in our pages last week - and their correspondence with CalMac's customer service manager Hugh Dan MacLennan has been published on their website (www.buteferryusersgroup.co.uk).

Among improvements mooted or already made is a 'traffic light' system to indicate service status on CalMac's website, text message disruption alerts - and tea bags on board MV Coruisk!

(This story was published in the December 8, 2006 issue of The Buteman.)