AMBU Pendlerrute Schedules 2026

AMBU is not a conventional ferry service. It is the commuter run of the MS Liv, the ambulance and community boat serving the small islands of Sande municipality on the Sunnmøre coast of Møre og Romsdal, Norway. The same vessel that answers medical callouts also carries residents and visitors between the islands on a published timetable, all year round.

Where it sails

The boat links the fast-craft quays at Larsnes on the mainland with Åram, Voksa, Kvamsøya and Storholmen. Crossings are short — five minutes between most stops, ten to Storholmen — and the service runs alongside, not instead of, the car ferries: the county operator FRAM runs the vehicle routes Årvika–Koparneset and Larsnes–Åram–Voksa–Kvamsøy from the neighbouring ferry quays.

Note that the fast-craft quay and the car-ferry quay are separate berths in several of these villages, so check which one your sailing uses.

🔔 Some departures must be booked

This is the thing to know before you plan around it. Sailings marked on the municipality's timetable as bestillingstur — on-demand departures — only run if someone books them, and the booking must be made at least two hours before departure by phoning the boat on +47 466 78 434. Turning up at the quay for one of these without calling ahead means the boat will not be there.

Separate timetables are published for the Christmas and New Year period, when the ordinary commuter pattern does not apply.

Practical note

Because MS Liv is first and foremost an ambulance boat, a medical callout takes priority over the scheduled run. Delays and cancellations at short notice are part of how the service works, and islanders plan around it. The timetable is published by Sande kommune rather than by a ferry company.

A chain of five-minute hops, running until half past ten at night

The individual legs here are tiny: Voksa to Aram is five to six minutes, Kvamsøya to Voksa seven to nine, and the Larsnes legs five to thirteen. Each carries seven or eight departures, and the whole service runs from 06:45 to 22:20.

Read them as one boat working a chain rather than as separate routes: it starts on the outer island before seven in the morning and finishes after ten at night, calling in sequence. That span is what turns a handful of small islands into somewhere a person can hold a job on the mainland. The departures carry five different day masks, which on a service this thin is the difference between a connection and an overnight stay.