Hamnavoe will sail into her namesake harbour
Kirkwall woman names NorthLink ferry
(From The Orcadian dated August 23, 2001)

The names of the vessels have also been decided and the ferry serving Stromness and Scrabster will be called Hamnavoe.

The name was chosen by Linda Harcus, Hordaland, Kirkwall, who won the top prize in a vessel naming competition which attracted more than 415 entries.

Hamnavoe was suggested by seven entrants in total and Mrs Harcus was finally declared the winner after a secret ballot.

The names of the three other NorthLink ferries are to be announced over the next two days by BBC Radio Shetland, The Shetland Times and BBC Radio Orkney.

Mrs Harcus and a partner will be taken to Akker Finnyards in Rauma, Finland, as part of her prize to see the progress of the three ferries being built. She will also be invited to be a VIP guest of NorthLink at an inaugural sailing of the vessels when they come into service. Each runner-up will also be invited, with a partner as guests.

Hamnavoe, from the Old Norse hafnvagr means haven or harbour voe, has been made well known through the writings of Stromness author and poet George Mackay Brown.

Mrs Harcus told The Orcadian: "It said in the paper that they wanted links to the islands and I thought something relating to Stromness was Hamnavoe because they have a Hamnavoe Restaurant and Hamnavoe Engineering and Stromness used to be called Hamnavoe years ago. So I thought I'd give it a go."

A metal cutting ceremony took place at the yard on Monday to mark the beginning of construction work on the ships and NorthLink chief executive John Horton set the build process in motion by stamping the name of one of the vessels onto a sheet of metal which will be incorporated into the ferry.

Speaking on Monday, Mr Horton said the company had been concentrating since the award of the contract in December on designing the best vessels ever seen on the Orkney and Shetland routes.

"We have seen the plans and we have seen the computer generated models. Today we see the start of the real thing," he said.

Commenting on the competition, he said the quality of names suggested by entrants made the job difficult.

"We were particularly touched to receive two entries from very young islanders, three-year-old Laura Polson from Whalsay and Harold and Magnus Gilfillan, aged five and three from Weisdale. We invited them, and their parents, to attend the inaugural sailing of the Shetland vessel and gave them each a £20 book token to show our appreciation."

NorthLink's commercial director Gareth Crichton added: "We are really pleased that there were so many entrants and we have decided that all entrants to the competition will be entitled to a 50 per cent discount on two passenger tickets once the NorthLink service is operating."