Monday, July 2 will mark the return of the ferry service linking Funchal (Madeira), Portimão and the Canary Islands (Spain).
The service will only be available in the summer and will be served by the same Volcan de Tijarafe ship that was used six years ago when the ferry link was scrapped.
According to Madeira’s DNotícias news website, the ferry will leave Tenerife in the Canary Islands on Sundays, arrive in Funchal on Mondays and reach Portimão on Tuesday mornings.
The ferry will return on Tuesdays, arrive the following day in Funchal and reach its final destination, Tenerife, on Thursdays.
There will be 12 round trips a year and the paper adds that the trip will cost €58.
Grupo Sousa, whose bid to run the service has been approved, has also denied that the trip will take 27 hours, saying that the voyage between the two Portuguese destinations will take less than a day.
One of the main concerns will be to ensure the ferry service is profitable. Indeed, it was due to “huge losses” that Naviera Armas pulled out of the previous ferry service.
In its last year of service, the route registered 22,000 passengers and transported 4,500 vehicles.
michael.bruxo@algarveresident.com
