A tour operator called on Bermudians to “step up to the wicket”, after tourists were left stranded in St George by the Dockyard ferry.Tempers flared after visitors, mainly from the Norwegian Dawn docked at the West End, were turned away from yesterday’s Orange Route ferry.A long queue around Kings Square meant about 75 people were left behind at 3.45pm.Philip “Phoopa” Anderson, who runs the Argo II water taxi service, came to assist.Speaking after he dropped off 39 tourists in Dockyard the maximum number of passengers his tour boat is licensed to carry Mr Anderson said that although he charged a fee, he offered to ferry visitors out of a sense of civic duty.“We all should be jumping in together to help out,” he said. “I stepped up to the wicket.“There are concerned citizens who will help out when the country needs us to, and I feel it’s my duty to serve the country when people are stranded.“I work St George’s we go to Clearwater, Grotto Bay, Tucker’s Point, St David’s. But I found all these people there and I took them along the North Shore to Dockyard. Otherwise they would have been stranded, and I couldn’t just leave them at the docks.“I couldn’t take everybody; I had to send away a few, but a lot of people caught buses.”Visitors who had arrived on the incoming ferry described “irate people” waiting to board.“I thought it was rush hour, or they were having a run on rum cakes,” said one woman, who estimated the crowd as about 250.A crew member counted heads, leaving the rest to wait on buses, the 6.15pm ferry or the Argo II.Mr Anderson said a bigger boat was needed.“What happened was they had an unusually large amount of people, and the Serenity can’t hold that many,” he said.“They need to send a bigger boat like the Warbaby Fox, because that particular run is crowded every day.”He added: “But I’m not going to bad-mouth the ferry service. We just need to pull together.”