The Skeena Queen was unable to dock at the Fulford Harbour ferry terminal at 9:35 a.m. Friday due to a power outage, and the ship was rerouted to Long Harbour to unload.
Typically the vessel can use ship-to-shore power to lower the ramp in the case of power outage, but for a reason unknown to ship engineers that system was not working.
“There was a power outage there. Normally we would be able to operate the ramp with our ship-to-shore power, and unfortunately our engineers have not been able to get that ship-to-shore power working,” said BC Ferries spokesperson Deborah Marshall. “They have been troubleshooting and all attempts have been exhausted.”
The vessel, which had been loaded with passengers destined for Salt Spring and left Swartz Bay at 9 a.m., was rerouted to discharge at the Long Harbour terminal. It is expected to return to Fulford Harbour for 1:40 p.m. and be underway soon after.
“We’ve had to cancel a couple of sailings between Fulford Harbour and Swartz Bay as a result,” she said. “We certainly apologize to customers. Normally that ship to shore power does work, but we were having a glitch this morning.”
The glitch is expected to be resolved when the Skeena Queen returns to Fulford Harbour.
The Skeena Queen will be undergoing a mid-life refit starting on Monday. It will be replaced by the Queen of Cumberland until mid-March 2020.
In other BC Ferries news, high winds cancelled some Friday sailings between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay, and between Horseshoe Bay and Departure Bay.