Embattled BC Ferries vessel likely to be out of the water until mid-October

The embattled Coastal Renaissance will likely be out of commission until mid-October, resulting in continued cancellations and re-bookings for customers, BC Ferries said Tuesday.

The C-Class vessel, built in 2007, was taken out of the water last week for mechanical failures in its engine. Its rotor must now be removed in order to complete a full inspection and damage assessment.

“Certainly this is a major issue and it’s extremely unfortunate,” said Stephen Jones, director of engineering for BC Ferries, in a press conference.

“We’ll do everything we can to get it back into service. These vessels have had a reliable history with BC Ferries.”

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Crews are currently working on a plan to remove the 33 tonnes of equipment that has to come out, and expect to have an outline ready for Sept. 1, Jones said. The actual removal won’t likely take place until between Sept. 7 and 10, with an inspection sometime between Sept. 11 and 15.

That means the Coastal Renaissance — which operates two major routes between Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island — will be out of service over the Labour Day weekend and likely Thanksgiving as well.

BC Ferries, however, is taking it one long weekend at a time. Customer care director Karen Tindall said the company still has to notify about 3,700 of more than 7,500 people with reservations on the vessel.

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“Most of the customers were not able to be moved to alternate sailings so a majority of those customers were outright cancelled, refunded automatically,” she said.

Tindall was unable to reveal the estimated cost of those refunds, nor was Jones able to estimate the cost of repairs.

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BC Ferries has set up a priority queue at its call centre for impacted Renaissance travellers.

CEO Nicolas Jimenez said another C-Class vessel — the Queen of Coquitlam — will take over for the Coastal Renaissance on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until the repairs are complete. The Queen of Coquitlam normally travels between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay in Nanaimo, and Langdale.

The issues with the Renaissance come less than two months after the Coastal Celebration was drydocked for repairs for the Canada Day long weekend, resulting in more than 6,600 reassigned bookings and eight fewer daily sailings for six days.

Sailings were cancelled again when the Coastal Celebration returned to the water afterward, 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.

Late last month, BC Ferries Services Board chair Joy MacPhail told Global News that “no one at BC Ferries thinks this is acceptable,” referring to the multiple service challenges.

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Addressing concerns on Tuesday, Jimenez said BC Ferries is preparing to spend “considerable sums” of cash modernizing its fleet. A proposal for acquiring more Island Class ferries — smaller vessels — to serve the Gulf Islands is going before the board this week, while another proposal to acquire more C-Class will be in the works for many months to come, he added.

“That is a major, major investment. You need to understand that program would likely be $2 billion or more, so these things don’t happen overnight — to design, procure and commission the build,” he said.

“That is a process measured in years, not months.”

4:33 BC Ferries CEO addresses issues, says crews and ferries ready for long weekend

Jones, meanwhile, reiterated that the mechanical issues on the Coastal Celebration and the Coastal Renaissance are not related. The “spike” in issues, however, can be chalked up to their age and usage.

“Our business is quite hard on assets — we run these vessels 18 hours a day, 330 days a year,” he explained.

“We do everything we can to monitor and maintain and ensure reliability. Obviously in this case we’ve had a significant failure and we’ll do all that we can to get it back in place as quickly as possible.”

A typical warranty on a vessel the size of the C-Class ferries is between 12 months and two years.