Douglas port upgrade will safeguard for the future, harbour boss says

The Manxman is almost twice as heavy as the Ben-my-Chree

Upgrading Douglas Harbour will "protect the infrastructure for the next 50 years", the project's boss has said.

Director of harbours David Gooberman said the harbour remained a "critical piece of infrastructure" and it and the new Manx ferry needed to be protected.

Work on the King Edward VIII Pier is designed to keep both safe during gale force winds, he said.

The project is scheduled to last six months, starting on Saturday, at a cost of £6.61m.

The island's new ferry the Manxman is due to take over as the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company's flagship vessel from October.

The work will see the pier walls repaired and fenders and mooring bollards replaced.

Mr Gooberman said the engineering project was "quite a complex operation" and replacing the bollards alone would require taking "a patch of the actual pier away" and drilling "down into the bedrock".

David Gooberman said the pier would still be used by ferries while the work took place

He said there was "never going to be an easy time" to undertake the work, as "whatever time we did it there was going to be a vessel using the berth all the time".

However, he said he was confident it would be "finished by February".

He said the project is the first element of the harbours strategy to materialise and was the "first big take away" from the 2018 document.

"It needs to be done because Douglas Harbour is an absolutely critical piece of infrastructure for the Isle of Man," he said.

"We've got two sailings a day going in and out and with goods going in, goods going out... without that the Isle of Man couldn't really survive."

Mr Gooberman said it was therefore essential to future-proof that "really critical infrastructure".