A £3.75m Heritage Lottery Fund bid has been submitted to secure MV Balmoral’s long-term future.

The coastal excursion ship, which has been a regular visitor to the island for three decades, won’t be able to sail next year as funding isn’t in place for repairs that need to be carried out before the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) will issue a passenger certificate.

A spokesman for the boat’s owners, MV Balmoral Fund Limited, said: ’We have been aware for some time from our discussions with the MCA that substantial and costly improvements would need to be made to the crew accommodation on MV Balmoral before the 2019 season.

Repairs

’We have more recently been advised that the long accepted practice of using doubled plates to repair the hull was no longer acceptable for anything other than emergency repairs.

’This not only applies to future repairs but also means that previous repairs need to be removed and re-done.

The very considerable cost of this work is included in our £3.75 million bid.’

It is expected that if the bid is successful, the owners would have to raise £375,000 in match funding.

MV Balmoral is in its winter berth in Bristol, under the care of a maintenance volunteer team.

The boat was built in 1949 for Red Funnel for Isle of Wight services.

She later moved to the Bristol Channel with P & A Campbell as White Funnel.

She has been charity owned since 1984 and was taken over by MV Balmoral Fund in 2015.

MV Balmoral has been on the National Historic Ships Register since 2002 and was its flagship of the year in 2016.

This year, Balmoral only managed 55 of her 116 scheduled sailings.

Sailings to the Isle of Man had to be cancelled following an announcement from the MCA.