It didn’t take long Thursday to show the impact on ferry travellers when Coastal Celebration was pulled from daily service between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay.
The ferry went off duty Wednesday afternoon because it was leaking oil, and sailing reservations filled up quickly on the remaining three ferries serving the route during peak summer season.
By mid-afternoon Thursday, there was just one sailing with reservation room remaining on the Tsawwassen-to-Swartz Bay route — at 1 a.m. Friday.
For the Swartz Bay to Tsawwassen route, only the 11 p.m. sailing — the final run on Thursday — had reservation space.
Losing Coastal Celebration highlights the long-standing problem of service disruptions faced by the company.
B.C. Ferries travellers are now used to checking bcferries.com or social media for notices cautioning that their vessel might not sail because of a crew shortage.
Passengers are also experiencing delays on some routes when it takes extra time to load and unload vehicles because of heavy traffic.
Coastal Celebration is going into dry dock in North Vancouver to fix the oil leak. B.C. Ferries hopes it will be back in service by the end of the coming week. Its four daily round-trip sailings have been cancelled until it returns.
B.C. Ferries has been rescheduling thousands of bookings for travellers who had reserved spots on Coastal Celebration, which can carry up to 310 cars and 1,604 passengers and crew.
On the Canada Day long weekend, terminals were swamped and travellers faced multi-sailings waits because Coastal Celebration was late returning from its annual refit.
Meanwhile, B.C. Ferries announced Thursday that the Northern Adventure’s schedule will be modified on July 23 due to needed repairs to its starboard engine.
It’s expected to be running on its normal schedule, which includes stops at Prince Rupert and Haida Gwaii, by July 24.
