Repairs to Grand Manan ferry may take days

The new $68-million Grand Manan ferry remained off its run Tuesday due to a mechanical failure involving the docking equipment and may not be back in service for a couple more days, officials say.

Murray Ryder, the general manager of Coastal Transport, was hoping the Grand Manan Adventure would be backonlineTuesday after some passengers were left stranded Monday.

But the delayed arrival of representatives of the ship's manufacturer, Eastern Shipbuilding Group Inc., from Panama City, Fla., as well asofficials who manufactured the ship's bow thrusters has put that plan behind schedule.

Ryder had been expecting them to arrive in Blacks Harbour about noon Tuesday, but by late afternoon, they still hadn't arrived.

The ferry's two bow thrustersfailed one after the other on Monday morning as the captain docked the boat, Ryder said.

"There seems to be more than one gremlin at work, unfortunately," he said. "One of the thrusters seems to have an electrical problem and the other one seems to have gone into a bit of an overload mode and we haven't really identified just what's causing it to do that.

"We had divers down checking for ropes (in the thrusters), hoping that would be an easy fix.... There was no ropes."

Coastal Transport staff, local and marine electricians, as well as a local representative of one of the manufacturers all investigated the matter late into Monday evening to no avail, said Ryder.

The bow thrusters are essential to safe docking, so the ferry will remain out of service while the matter is investigated, he said.

Ryder said it's disappointing to have a new shipencounter problems,but not uncommon.

"You do your dock trials and you do your terminal trials, but it's a new, complicated piece of equipment with many thousands of pieces of equipment out there and it just happens. Hopefully this is the last of them."

The Grand Manan V helped pick up the slack on Monday, but the number of runs was still downto four fromseven during peaktourism season.

"Overall the traffic was pretty well handled," said Ryder. "I guess we had four autos left in Blacks Harbour, but we ended on time and throughout the day the maximum traffic left behind was four autos, plus one truck. So the traffic moved, although people had to wait an extracouple of hours."

Ryderexpected the ferry service to be back on schedule Tuesday. The Grand Manan V was to continueproviding four trips out of Grand Manan, while the MV Grand Manan was also pressed into service, offering three trips out of Blacks Harbour.

The Adventure, which replaced the Grand Manan V as the main, year-round link from the island to the mainland, had its maiden voyage on Aug. 11.