Tough decision: get in the car line-up or not? Once there, it’s hard to get out. But what’s the alternative?
(By Elizabeth Rains)
It was a rough day for BC Ferries yesterday, and perhaps even rougher for ferry passengers. Just days after completing a refit of the Queen of Surrey, the boat crashed into the pontoon dock used by the Gambier-Keats passenger ferry.
Michael Brooks of Gibsons was there when it crashed. He had arrived at the terminal to pick up his girlfriend from the first run from Horseshoe Bay. But when the ferry arrived in Langdale at 8:11 a.m. his girlfriend didn’t get off, and neither did any other passenger.
He said the ferry approached the terminal going toward the beach; it didn’t turn to straighten out in line with the dock. “Then I heard a crunch,” he said.
That was the sound of the ferry bashing into the pontoon dock. By 10 a.m., Brooks was still standing on the ferry beach, waiting for his girlfriend to get off.
Ferry spokesperson Deborah Marshall reported there were 285 persons on board. At first they seemed to stay on the inside deck. They were treated to coffee and given frequent updates, Brooks’ girlfriend reported on her cell phone.
By midday, many passengers could be seen on the top, open deck, standing at the rails and gazing out at the ferry beach. There, at least a dozen people like Brooks were gazing back at them.
Ferry personnel reported that passengers were unable to leave the ferry because the ramp from the damaged boat could not connect with the dock. The plan was to send a tug boat to pull the ferry to the alternate berth on the south side of the terminal so the damaged end of the ferry would be facing outward, allowing passengers to disembark from its undamaged end.
Stephen Smith of Gibsons was on the beach taking photos of the stranded ferry. He said he’s familiar with the tides, which began going out within an hour after the accident. He said the tug boat should hurry. “If they try to tow it off the low tide, they’re going to have a hell of a time.”
By mid-morning, BC Ferries had designated the next sailing to Horseshoe Bay from Langdale as 6:40 p.m. That was to be on the Queen of Cowichan, already scheduled for evening runs.
The damage on the ferry’s bow could cripple the boat for a while, a ferry worker suggested (name withheld because of corporation policy). The recent refit had beautified the Queen of Surrey’s interior with an expanded gift shop, new tables and other eye-pleasing touches, but it also included extensive work on the engine. “I feel bad,” the worker said. “The engineers worked very hard on it.”
Once passengers heard of the day-long ferry cancellation, many left on the bus or drove out of the ferry line-up, abandoning their plans. But many others had nowhere else to go.
Maxine Davies from Coquitlam has a cottage on Keats, and she was facing a dilemma. She was to attend a family dinner in town yesterday evening, and would be babysitting two granddaughters. She and her husband had just come across on the little green ferry from Keats when the ferry driver told them about the accident.
“We were stranded, we didn’t know what we were going to do, maybe sit in the [car] line-up for six hours,” she said. Their truck was in the Langdale ferry parking lot. She wouldn’t go back to Keats because she was needed to babysit, and even if she had wanted to, she couldn’t: the Keats ferry had been cancelled. “We didn’t know whether to go in the car line-up because once you’re in the lineup you can’t get out,” she said. But if we didn’t get in the line-up, we probably wouldn’t get on (the 6:40 p.m. sailing).” They ended up staying in the line-up.
Many stranded passengers strolled to the Wheatberries kiosk or hung around in the terminal’s waiting room. There I chatted with Jonalyn Siemens, who vowed she’d get to Victoria no matter what. She had been planning to transfer to the Vancouver Island ferry in Horseshoe Bay, but now she would miss her planned sailing.
Siemens is a member of the Sunshine Coast 101 Committee, a group that wants to build a bypass from Langdale to Sechelt, a parkway with proper sidewalks and cycling paths. It would also provide an access route for emergency vehicles if the other route were blocked.
The group was going to meet this morning with Minister of Transportation Claire Trevena in Victoria. Sunshine Coast MLA Nicholas Simons would be there supporting them.
“I’m not going to get there until midnight tonight, but I’m not going to miss the meeting,” Siemens said.
At 10:36 a.m., as we were talking, she received an email saying her reservation for the 10:50 ferry from Langdale to Horseshoe Bay was cancelled. We laughed.
“Transportation on the Sunshine Coast—we’re completely underserved in every way,” Siemens said.