Passengers aboard the troubled Aratere ferry were stranded overnight after the vessel broke down en route to Wellington due to a propulsion drive issue.
The ferry, which left Picton at 8:50pm, resumed its journey at 1am and arrived around 5am Thursday.
KiwiRail cancelled two Thursday sailings to conduct further testing and is rebooking affected passengers.
Only 11 people were aboard during the delay.
The beleagured vessel, previously grounded in 2023 and recently plagued by mechanical faults, is set to be retired by August, with new replacement ferries not arriving until 2029.
Faulty ferries
One retiring captain lamenting on his career said “one thing he would not miss was looking for the entrance to Tory channel on a sh*tty night” – paraphrasing
Lets hope this doesn’t happen when human failings and fallibility conspire at some critical juncture in time resulting in loss of life
Reminds me of the Rakaia crash of 1899
https://annas-archive.org/md5/be7b08888824c8ed919829c22b2e3abf
As for electric ferries
I wouldn’t touch one with a barge pole let alone go on one
I read $3billion for new rail friendly ferries. A drop in the bucket for our many billionaires….(or $600 each, given our 5 million head of population)
Yes that’s how socialism works but no thank you.
Not again! This is an accident waiting to happen. The new ferries from overseas should have be bought by NZ Givt a long time ago!
There should have been efforts started 10-15 years ago to bring in a TBM and begin tunneling with EQ reinforced sleeve liners.
The Tory Channel; imagine bringing in the two ferries that Liebour contracted to, and trying to make the turn at the Tory Channel head with a ferry that was too long to navigate such a tight turn.
Big ain’t necessarily better…especially when it comes to manoeuvering in such a tight space, with another vessel trying to do the same going the opposite direction….
But, Toll could re-name the Aratere as ‘The Jabcinda Ardern’, tow it into deep water, and let the Air Force and Navy use it as target practice….
Only 11 passengers on board?
Were they truckies trying to catch a 3 hour nap?
Looks like toll is losing money on this route…along with the money wasted due to cancelling new ferry orders on boats that were too large to make the sharp turn in and out of the Tory Channel…