‘Send her to the scrap yard’: Confederate ferry is showing her age, naval architect says
It’s time the federal government considered replacing the Confederation’s ferry, which broke for the third time in a month on Sunday, said John Dalziel, a naval architect and adjunct professor of engineering at Dalhousie University.
Northumberland Ferries has canceled Monday’s sailings between Wood Islands, PEI and Caribou, NS and has not announced when they may resume.
Confederation is currently the only ferry available for that route.
The 50-year-old Holiday Island caught fire last summer and has since been demolished. The interim replacement, MV Saaremaa, is in dry dock and will not arrive until mid-July. The Confederacy was out of service for a day on June 4 due to technical problems, and for two weeks from June 17. It only ran for a day and a half before it broke again on Sunday.
Confederation was founded in 1993. Speaking to CBC News on Thursday, before the weekend outage, Dalziel said that in most countries time on the water would be considered over.
“When a ship is 30 years old, it’s generally ready to retire,” he said.
‘Take some nice pictures of the ship, take some mementos if you like, ship’s bell and some other things, and send her to the scrap yard. Frankly, that’s where a ship of that age should go.’
The ferry was out of action for two weeks because the part needed to repair it, for the port engine’s main clutch, had to be specially fabricated. Sunday’s problem is in the starboard engine clutch, Northumberland Ferries said.
‘Vital link’
The lack of reliability in the ferry service is a source of growing alarm for tourism operators, transportation companies and politicians, both in eastern PEI and on Nova Scotia’s northern coast.
“The ferry service between Wood Islands and Caribou is a vital link between the provinces,” said Pictou Mayor Jim Ryan.
“We’re behind the 8-ball right now, really in the sense that we should actually be looking at replacing the Confederacy.”
Ryan worries that as the service becomes less reliable, people may give up using it altogether.
MV Holiday Island was scheduled for replacement even before the fire ended its career last summer.
A new ferry was announced in the 2019 federal budget to be ready to sail in 2027. Last month, the government announced that the launch had been postponed for a year.
“Nine years, I think, is totally inappropriate,” Dalziel said of the time to design and build the new ferry.
Five years is a more reasonable timeframe for the project, he said, adding that the government needs to get a better handle on construction and the inevitable problems associated with building a new ship.
