Pattaya-Hua Hin Ferry Service At Last !

[rossco]

RR are you taking on captaincy?

I hope they have a Farang captain as ...................................

[mardhi]

RR is better qualified than most - but to my uneducated eyes - that looks like a small boat for 100 passengers - cant be more than about 12m long from that picture. Certainly does not fill me with confidence on what is presumably about a 5 hour crossing in somewhat choppy seas.

Is it just me or does anyone else think there is essentially zero demand to make this commercially worthwhile at what would be an acceptable retunr in current high gas prices?

Cheers
Mardhi

[f0xxee]

I have done the drive recently from Patts to HH both by car and motorbike, and with the new ring road (and one of the most beautiful bridges I have ever crossed) done the trip resonably legally (speeds <120kph) in 3 hours.

As one who has spent all his life at sea I know what catamarans are like in a beam swell... Bloody horrid. Take a few puke bags. And secondly I resist every temptation to get on a ferry in Asia beause their seamanship may be fine, but their knowledge of sea safety, rules of the road, stability and emergency procedure tends to be lacking.

I remember when they built two by 200 pax hi speed ferrys to do the run from Melbourne to Tassie. The y used to wash the puke out with fire hose. The project lasted 2 seasons and folded.

My guess this might last the high season and then adios.... Mardhi had a good point. Medium speed deisel engines are thirsty and the break-even on this one (especially if they keep the vessel in survey to a reputable classification society) will be prohibitively high...

Not enough market.

Lastly I moved to HH to get away from Sodom by the sea, so if you see a gnarled Aussie in a row boat laying mines you know who to blame.

[Mister Ree]

If the drive is really 3 hours now, then a direct minivan service would make a hell of a lot more sense. The problem now for those of us who don't drive ourselves is that we have to go all the way into Bangkok and transfer. Eats up a day.

[EyeMahk]

(Mister Ree @ Jul. 23 2009,00:30) If the drive is really 3 hours now, then a direct minivan service would make a hell of a lot more sense.

I think Snick mentioned that there might be such a minivan service now from Pattaya direct to HH. I meant to ask around and check it out a few weeks ago when I was there but I totally forgot.

Snick?

[f0xxee]

Early June I popped Mrs Foxxee in a Hire Car at the PBH and Jumped on the Red rocket bound for HH and Green Acres.

She took around 3:15 minutes, I took slightly longer due to having to illegally transit toll booths on a motorbike. (How to get a big bike on the freeway: 1. Play the dumb falang at the toll booth. This is not difficult for me. 2. Take off rapidly thanking them no matter that they were pointing to the exit. 3. At the other end play dumb falang again and smile a lot and they smile a lot and you are there. Or you got a 1000 B fine, though this has not yet happened.)

The cost of the hire car was 1800B. Not too bad and you can negotiate better of course. This was booked via the PBR so naturally they had a tickle. Share it with a friend who owns a wallet and its pretty good.

I think the boat has missed the market. Had it started before the ring road from Freeway 7-34-4 was open it would have had a great market. Now I am not so sure, there is only time to be saved by boat on a day where the weather is fine and the sea slight.

Other than that I think it might be a waterborne puke-bucket.

[Snick]

I think Snick mentioned that there might be such a minivan service now from Pattaya direct to HH. I meant to ask around and check it out a few weeks ago when I was there but I totally forgot.

Right in front of Tops, at the corner of 2nd Road and Central Pattaya Road.
Never used the service myself.

[jonstroud]

It takes 45 minutes on a fairly quick boat to do the trip to Koh Larn, so I suspect even three hours is an underestimate of the true time it would take to get from Pattaya to Hua Hin. Anything smaller than the Koh Larn ferry would be a bumpy ride in even a moderate swell. If the passengers are packed like sardines, it could be a very messy trip. This project is doomed.

[Mister Ree]

(jonstroud @ Jul. 23 2009,08:01) Right in front of Tops, at the corner of 2nd Road and Central Pattaya Road.
Never used the service myself.

Anyone know where the service picks up in Hua Hin?

[f0xxee]

Oh dear oh dear,


Read the whole thread Mr Ree... the ferry service has yet to start. Or are you talking about the bus between HH and Patts? Your frugal economy with words makes it hard to know.

I have just visited their website which is still under construction. It now sez they plan to start runs October 09 and are looking for agents both ends to sell tickets. Interestingly enough they are advertising for "Captains" (so they must be going to war: Merchant vessels have masters or skippers) and hostesses.

Good luck agents.

According to google earth it is pretty much bang on 60  nautical miles or 108 kilometres from wharf to wharf. Since 20 knots is a very good top speed for any passenger ferry, that makes it a minimum of 3 hours plus probably 10 minutes berthing/ unberthing each end. Remember that is on a good day. The pictures of the boat I have seen do not project  wave piercing hulls (sharp pointy bits under the waterline) but more conventional hulls and the whole thing looks pretty back yard, right down to the "Hella" car spotlights on the bow.

The tickets look like being 1200 B.

Attached are two photos. Both of the same boat, so they are probably it. Notice the size. 100 pax? There was a name for people who could fit 100 persons on a boat this size back in the 17th Century. They were called "Slavers".

If this thing does 20 knots at all it will (in my own humble experience of sea-faring) be surprising. If it does them with marine growth and a beam swell or a head wind or a combination of the three it will be a miracle.


Hmmmm. This boat don't float.

[Guest]

When I first heard a couple of years ago that this ferry service was in the planning stage, I was rather hoping that the craft would be silmilar to one of those Aussie Quicksilver type luxury catamarans which are used to explore the barrier reef off Port Douglas  



However, while sat in a deck chair on Pattaya beach over my twenty odd years of sex tourism  I have witnessed some extraordinary looking vessels slowly moving across the Gulf of Siam laden with both Thais and Tourists wondering how the hell it was even able to float  
By contrast the boat currently undergoing sea trials by it's Swedish owners/operators looks ok to me  
I'm not going to let you pussy scaremongers put me off  

Are there sharks out there  

[Road Runner]

I have - shall we say? - a little practice operating ferries.  Though normally a little larger than this one.

So far as it's possible to work out design and construction from two photographs it looks OK to me.
Though I do have  serious  doubts about it's ability to carry 100 passengers.

As I have seen no dimensions I can only work out the heights, count the windows and guesstimate.
Inside I would say it has 6 or at most 8 rows of seats and probably 6-8 wide so maximum of 64 seats.
My bet would be it's actually 6 rows long and 7 wide = 42 seats inside.

Don't know how they work in Thailand  -  but in Europe you have to have a seat for every passenger.
You really want to stand for 3 hours in a rough sea?  Or more probably 4 as I also doubt it will make 20 knots in the short steep seas in the Gulf of Thailand.

It could be commercially viable with a capacity of 42 but they will have to keep the crossings to no more than about 3 hours and the ticket prices will have to be similar to the total cost of the road trip.

In this sort of operation you are selling comfort and convenience, but when it comes to transport people also look carefully at ticket prices.


RR.

[f0xxee]

Hi Pentire,

There are a few sharks out there, but not so many... most have their fins cut off for soup. Have seen the odd big fella (I am approx 7.1 degrees N and 104.1 E and a lot further out in the 'oggin) but rarely.

No what you need to worry about is getting out of the thing in the first place when it capsizes or is holed.

I regularly take a ferry in Vietnam that is a 1.5 hour trip, and cannot for the life of me sit inside watching the lack of knowledge applied by the Master.

[Snick]

(Road Runner @ Jul. 23 2009,16:49) Don't know how they work in Thailand  -  but in Europe you have to have a seat for every passenger.

You've been here long enough to know how it works in Thailand, or more precisely how it doesn't work in Thailand
I've had the misfortune of taking the Ferry from Surat Thani to Samui and I would say there was 1 seat for every 2 passengers. Some people were out on the deck, some sitting on the ground inside, etc...
My guestimate looking at the picture was 40, tops 60 people in comfort. So 120 Thai style.

[Guest]

Cheers f0xxee,

Talking of bad ferry trips, my worst experience was between Phnom Penh & Siem Reap (250km) across the massive Tonle Sap Lake, it took five hours.
We were jammed in that boat like sardines and there must have been a hundred of us on board with every seat taken.
I finished up travelling the last two hours sat on the roof, then it started to rain  
My journey back to PP was in a taxi cab