Isle of Wight ferry firm Wightlink has announced cancellations on its Fishbourne to Portsmouth route today (Friday).

The 9am, 11am, 1pm and 3pm sailings from Fishbourne are off.

From Portsmouth, the 10am, 12pm and 2pm crossings are cancelled.

It's understood a problem on vessel St Clare is to blame.

Sailings were also cancelled last night after a technical issue emerged.

Affected Islanders have been moved to alternative sailings - in some cases on the Yarmouth to Lymington route.

Updated

Sara Howden, head of customer experience, said: "St Clare has been taken out of service because of a mechanical fault and our engineers are currently working hard to fix it, so the ferry can come back into service as soon as possible.

"We have been contacting customers with bookings to move them to alternative sailings on Victoria of Wight or on our Yarmouth to Lymington route.

"Our third ship on the Fishbourne-Portsmouth route, St Faith, is already in Falmouth for dry-docking as part of its scheduled annual refit and cannot come back into service.

"We sincerely apologise for disrupting our customers’ travel plans. If customers do not want to travel today, a full refund will be provided."