Ferry sailings between Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland cancelled ahead of long weekend

Travellers between Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland may experience even longer waits than normal this long weekend, as BC Ferries deals with unexpected additional maintenance on one of its largest ships.

The provincial ferry service announced Wednesday that its Coastal Celebration vessel had been removed from service for an "unplanned, extended refit," decreasing the overall passenger and vehicle capacity between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay ahead of the Canada Day long weekend.

In a statement, the ferry service said it had reassigned more than 6,600 bookings from the Coastal Celebration to other vessels, and that it had "averted booking cancellations."

The Coastal Celebration remains in dry dock "due to unexpected complications with its propulsion systems," the company said.

BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall said the vessel’s retrofit was supposed to be completed by June 15.

“The retrofit is taking longer than we had originally planned. And you know, we continue to work with the shipyard to get that vessel back in service as soon as we can. But unfortunately it won't be available for the long weekend,” Marshall told CTV News.

The loss of the Coastal Celebration means there will be eight fewer daily sailings between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay from Wednesday through Monday.

Marshall said those 6,600 passengers will be moved to alternate sailings within an hour of the original sailing they had booked.

“We certainly apologize to our customers. This is not the way we had planned for the long weekend. I know that we are going to be moving all the bookings that we can, as well as we'll have all the ticket booths opened up so that we can process traffic as quickly as possible,” she said.

While customers with reservations – who make up the vast majority of passengers, according to BC Ferries – will not be affected by the change, those without reservations are encouraged to travel as foot passengers, as unreserved vehicle space will be limited.

RESERVATION OUTAGES

BC Ferries' reservation system has gone down three times in the last 24 hours.

Wednesday at 1:30 p.m., the company tweeted that its online and customer service call centre reservation systems were unavailable.

At 3 p.m., the systems were restored.

Marshall said the outage was the result of rebooking the Coast Celebration sailings.

“We did experience performance issues with our reservation database today due to the mass reassignment of bookings from the Coastal Celebration’s sailings to other sailings for the July long weekend,” she explained. “Our IT department worked hard to correct this and had the system back up and running in about 90 minutes.”

But two hours later, at 5 p.m., BC Ferries sent out another tweet, advising people the reservation systems were down once again.

It’s unclear what prompted the latest outage.

Just one day earlier, BC Ferries sent out a similar tweet that its reservation systems were down. That issue was resolved after about 90 minutes. 

'I DON'T FIND IT ACCEPTABLE': PREMIER

Taking questions at an unrelated news conference Wednesday morning, Premier David Eby was asked if he's worried that BC Ferries appears to be dealing with "chaos" ahead of a busy long weekend.

The premier didn't provide a direct answer on whether he's worried, but he did acknowledge the "significant challenges" BC Ferries has been facing in finding staff.

"Our economy is very hot right now," Eby said. "It's difficult to find employees and BC Ferries has been challenged by that. They have the same supply chain issues that many businesses are facing in getting parts and getting access to repair ferries. And we're seeing some of those impacts. We're going to see some of those impacts this weekend on the long weekend when families need it most."

"I don't find it acceptable, but I do understand the challenges that BC Ferries faces for the long term," he added. "BC Ferries has the capital plan in place to get those new boats in place to ensure that people can get where they need to get and I want to thank British Columbians for their patience this weekend. And I want to encourage BC Ferries to redouble their efforts to ensure timely affordable access for British Columbians. I know that's what we all want." 

Marshall said the company is in the planning and design phase for the new vessels, which are expected to be in service in 2029.