BC Ferries pulls Coastal Celebration out of service Monday, multiple sailings cancelled

BC Ferries passengers sailing between Duke Point (Nanaimo) and Tsawwassen (Vancouver) were faced with multiple service interruptions on Monday.

The Coastal Celebration was pulled out of service due to a “mechanical difficulty with the propulsion system,” according to the ferry service.

BC Ferries stated at 3:30 p.m. that the issue was now fixed and regular sailings resumed with the previously cancelled 5:45 p.m. sailing.

The following sailings were cancelled:

• 5:15 a.m. departing Duke Point
• 7:45 a.m. departing Tsawwassen
• 10:15 a.m. departing Duke Point
• 12:45 p.m. departing Tsawwassen
• 3:15 p.m. departing Duke Point

When asked about the issue on Monday, Premier David Eby said the province is pressing BC Ferries to become more reliable and keep up with the demand after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eby said the province will continue to support the organization as they put in place “structures” for the ferries to run smoothly and on time.

0:43 Coastal Celebration experiences mechanical difficulty

Frustration has mounted with BC Ferries for many months, with crew shortages and mechanical challenges leading to cancelled sailings.

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On the May long weekend, an outage at BC Ferries’ data centre further caused its website and app to crash. The July long weekend presented challenges as well, as issues with the Coastal Celebration required it to reassign more than 6,600 bookings and run eight fewer sailing sailings on a major route for six days.

Sailings were cancelled again when the Coastal Celebration returned to the water, but further mechanical issues were identified. That same month, BC Ferries’ website showed an erroneous nine-sailing wait time and 12-hour delay, causing public confusion.

— with files from Elizabeth McSheffrey