Freight vessel contract agreed for Jersey and Portsmouth
Isle of Man Steam Packet Company (IOMSPC) has secured a long-term charter for one of its freight vessels which will sail predominantly between Jersey and Portsmouth.The vessel, Arrow, will operate for 12 months with DFDS, the firm that operates Jersey's ferry services between the island, UK and France. DFDS and Jersey's government signed a contract in December with the contract set to start from 28 March. IOMSPC managing director Brian Thomson said: "We're pleased to have secured a long term charter for Arrow with a renowned international operator such as DFDS."
He added: "This gives us security while the future fleet strategy is agreed with our stakeholders."Arrow was purchased by IOMSPC in September 2022 as a back-up freight vessel to the Ben-my-Chree, the company's main vessel at the time, for about £8 million. But in 2023, the company purchased a £78m vessel known as Manxman, IOMSPC's first new passenger and freight ferry since 1998.It signalled the end for the Ben-my-Chree as the island's main ferry which had now been retained for back-up passenger and freight services.
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Hamilton College pupil Benedict Nevo will soon be living the American dream having successfully applied to Columbia University in New York City. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Ben will be heading across the Atlantic to the Big Apple in the autumn having accepted the offer of a place on the four-year 'Undergraduate Scholars Program', where he'll be majoring in economics. After an outstanding academic performance at Hamilton College, Ben had offers from a range of US universities including the University of North Carolina, Indiana's Notre Dame and Boston College. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He has opted for the Big Apple, though, and can't wait to get started in one of the eight Ivy League schools which is widely regarded for its high academic standards, selectivity in admissions and social prestige. Dream: Benedict Nevo. 'I'm looking forward to attending Columbia University and exploring New York City. I'm sure I will find useful the skills I have learnt at Hamilton College and pick up some new ones at Columbia,' he said. 'Hamilton College's close-knit environment helped me in my Ivy League applications in many ways. 'The main way was being able to have a close relationship with my teachers, who helped me navigate the process and gave me advice on my application essays. Having a family-like community at school means that dreams and ambitions are not lost in the crowd, and everyone's unique goals are given enough attention. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'The school's rigorous curriculum also prepared me well for the SAT test, which I had to take before applying. The application process included a personal statement and supplemental essays for every university I applied to. Thanks to the extracurricular opportunities available at Hamilton College, I had loads to write about, from playing soccer to learning jazz pieces on the saxophone.' USA-bound: Benedict Nevo with Hamilton College headteacher Richard Charman. Richard Charman, Hamilton College Headteacher, said: 'Congratulations, Ben! We're excited to see you go from strength to strength as you embrace all that lies ahead. The world awaits. 'These offers reflect years of dedication, a strong academic record, and a passion for learning that have shaped Ben's journey through Hamilton College.' Welcoming Ben to Columbia, Jessica Marinaccio Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid said: 'By virtue of being named a Scholar, you are considered to be one of the most talented students admitted to the Class of 2029, selected from one of the largest applicant pools in Columbia's history. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad
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The Origin Hybrid Pro is a cool, smooth hunk of a thing. This gigantic hybrid bed-in-a-box would be the James Bond of mattresses, if Bond ever traded his 007 for life as a stacked gym bro. It's too firm for me, but if you've struggled to find a mattress that offers enough support without feeling like an actual plank of wood, it could be your ideal match. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. At £680 for a double, the Hybrid Pro isn't a bargain. However, its 31cm depth and beefy construction suggest to me that it will perform well for ages, potentially reducing aches, pains and night sweats, as well as providing years of comfortable sleep. My pipsqueak body needs more softness than the Hybrid Pro offers, so I asked my sister and her husband – avowed fans of a solid mattress – to sleep on it for two months and report back. They were almost unequivocally delighted, right up to the point where I told them the test was over and they had to give it to charity. Here, I'll reveal the many reasons why they adored the Hybrid Pro, and a couple of reasons I didn't. View at Origin Origin sent me a double of the Hybrid Pro for testing. I shared it with my husband for two nights before delegating sleep-testing responsibilities to my sister, Maeve, and brother-in-law, Ben. With other family members, we rated factors such as its firmness and overall comfort level side by side with several other mattresses, and I ran lab-style tests to measure factors such as sinkage, edge support and heat retention. You can read more about our mattress testing exploits here. View at Origin Many mattress companies bamboozle you with choice, but Origin keeps things simple by selling just two mattresses: the mid-price Hybrid and the premium Hybrid Pro. The Hybrid Pro comes in five sizes, ranging from single to super king. When not on offer, it's one of the most expensive mattresses I've tested, falling marginally cheaper than the £1,199 Simba Hybrid Pro. However, Origin (and indeed Simba, and other best mattress brands) runs regular sales with big discounts. As with all hybrid mattresses, the Hybrid Pro combines layers of springs and memory foam to provide a balance of support and comfort. There are two layers of titanium springs: more than 5,700 19cm springs for adaptive support, and a layer of microsprings whose jobs include reducing motion transfer to stop you being disturbed by a restless partner. The Hybrid Pro has three memory foam layers: a 5cm open-cell HexaGrid Plus layer to cushion the body and let the air circulate; breathable comfort foam, to absorb movement from the springs immediately below; and dense foam around the edges to fortify the mattress and support you when you get in and out of bed. The Hybrid Pro's cool, silky sleeping surface is made from Tencel, a breathable, cushioned material made from wood pulp. Then there's a 1.1cm layer of natural latex infused with graphite, followed by an organic bamboo-infused wool layer, which helps to regulate temperature and keep you cool at night. With eight layers (nine, if you include the non-slip base), the Hybrid Pro stacks up to a whopping 31cm, making it the deepest mattress I've tested. My standard double fitted sheet wasn't snug enough to stay in place all night, so I recommend investing in a deeper fitted sheet. It's heavy at 43kg, but Origin says you don't need to turn or rotate it to keep it consistently supportive. Origin describes the Hybrid Pro as medium-firm, but my mattress-testing panel – made up of my family – thinks it's firm, and gave it an 8.2/10 firmness score. When I stacked 7.5kg of weights on to the sleeping surface of the Hybrid Pro, it sank a maximum of 18mm, less than any other mattress I've tested. For comparison, the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid sank 40mm – and that's advertised as medium-firm, too. Origin's 200-night free trial gives you several months to test the mattress for yourself before deciding whether to keep it, and you also get a 15-year warranty. Type: hybridFirmness: advertised as medium-firm, panel rated as 8.2/10Depth: 31cmCover: not removableTurn or rotate: not neededTrial period: 200 nightsWarranty: 15 yearsOld mattress recycling: £54 Sustainability credentials: foam is CertiPUR approved; returned mattresses go to the British Heart Foundation The Hybrid Pro is a bed-in-a-box mattress, so it was vacuum-shrunk in the factory before being delivered to my hallway in a big cardboard box. Its next-day courier delivery was quicker than most rivals, and the early evening two-hour delivery window was convenient. The ArrowXL couriers left the boxed mattress in my hallway, and my husband and I hauled it upstairs for unpacking on our slatted bed base. The thick layers of tight plastic that kept the mattress from expanding en route were a pain to remove, although this is standard with bed-in-a-box mattresses. Scissors are essential to remove the plastic, as is a careful hand to avoid nicking the mattress. Once released from its cocoon, the Hybrid Pro inflated much faster than others I've tested, although the surface isn't consistently supportive until it's had at least a day to fully expand. Ferrying the huge mattress to my sister's house for sleep testing wasn't easy. Luckily, Ben has a van – but the van couldn't help us get the Hybrid Pro up their narrow stairs. We managed between the four of us, and wouldn't want to do it again. Get your mattress upstairs while it's still boxed, or ask the couriers to do it. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion The Hybrid Pro looks and feels more like a high-end pocket sprung mattress than a memory foam hybrid, which may be why my sister, Maeve, and her husband, Ben, fell in love with it at first kip. The couple had spent years sharing a firm sprung mattress, and had decided that no hybrid could match it for support and breathability. They disliked the spongy surface of the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, and found even the sumptuous Simba Hybrid Pro 'too flat and soft', with too little room for air to move around their skin. The Origin's 'silky surface with long dents' was more to their liking. The pillowy Tencel surface provided enough cushioning to stop the mattress from feeling too hard, according to Maeve and Ben, who sleep mainly on their sides and occasionally on their backs. Beneath the Tencel, the layers provided strong orthopaedic pushback, which they loved. Ben, in particular, reported that his sleep improved as a result. He uses a Garmin watch to track his sleep quality – drawing on factors such as how long he stayed asleep and how many times he woke in the night – and his average sleep score increased from 67 (fair) to 82 (good). My testers also reported excellent motion isolation and hailed the 'life-changing' failure to notice each other's tossing and turning. This could be because they were used to sleeping on a bouncy sprung mattress. In my tests with a glass of water, the Hybrid Pro was an average performer, absorbing movement less well than the Eve and Simba mattresses but better than the Otty Original Hybrid and the Ikea Valevåg. On breathability, the Origin is the best-performing hybrid mattress I've tested. No mattress can actively cool you down unless you put your sheets in the freezer, but the Hybrid Pro's cool surface, open-cell foam and other cooling materials successfully averted night-time clamminess for my testers. It performed well in my heat-retention tests, too, cooling down faster than all rivals, other than Ikea's budget pocket sprung Valevåg. As with all the mattresses I tested, I shared the Hybrid Pro with my husband for two nights before handing it over to our relatives. We liked the puffy surface but found the overall tension too firm for comfort. When lying on my side, my hips and shoulders didn't feel cradled as with the Otty and the Simba. That's worth bearing in mind if, like me, you're small or a side sleeper and need some cushioning. Then there's the size issue. Origin says you don't have to turn or rotate the Hybrid Pro, but you still have to change your bedsheets, and you need strong arms to lift the corners of this thing. My standard sheets didn't fit on it securely enough to avoid crumpling in the night, so you may need to buy special deep fitted sheets. The lack of a removable cover surprised me, especially given the price of this mattress. It's become standard for premium hybrids to have a fabric cover that you can unzip and wash in the machine, but here it's sewn into place. The surface damages easily, too, as we discovered when assaulting it with weights, thermometers, boots and cat claws for our tests. Add a special deep mattress protector to that bedsheet shopping list. Many of the materials used in the Hybrid Pro are easily and widely recycled. Metal springs, wool, fabric and natural latex are all recyclable, although you will need to take them to the appropriate sections of a waste facility. Memory foam (low-resistance polyurethane foam) presents a tougher environmental challenge. It's made using energy-intensive processes, and isn't biodegradable or easily recyclable, so it often ends up in landfill. To have it recycled by specialists, you need to pay a mattress company to collect it. Origin, like rivals including Otty and Simba, will recycle your old mattresses, whether or not they're made by the brand. Origin doesn't recycle all the unwanted mattresses it receives, though. If they're in good enough shape to be reused, it deep-cleans them and donates them through its charity partner, the British Heart Foundation. This collection service isn't free, and Origin's £54 fee is higher than Simba's £50 and Otty's £40. All Origin's materials are certified by Oeko-Tex and CertiPUR to minimise the impact on health and the environment, and Origin says its products are made 'without mercury, lead and heavy metals, ozone depleters, formaldehyde, VOCs [or] phthalates regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission'. The company also aims to be net zero by 2030. This is a fabulously well-made and luxurious mattress that should last more than a decade. If you crave strong support with a dash of cooling cushioning on top, the Origin Hybrid Pro is a worthy investment. View at Origin Jane Hoskyn is a freelance consumer journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
