'Be prepared for a wait,' says Northumberland Ferries

Northumberland Ferries is warning travellers using its Wood Islands, P.E.I., to Caribou, N.S., service "to be prepared for a wait" and encouraging them to call ahead and make reservations.

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The company announced last month the MV Holiday Island was not fit to sail and needed repairs, so it decided to sail its only operational ferry, the MV Confederation, more often and start earlier on weekdays.

"We've opened up more capacity for reservations than what we normally would have," said Don Cormier, Northumberland's vice-president of operations and safety management, noting they've typically been taking reservations for nearly 160 vehicles per crossing.

"The people that really are inconvenienced are people that have high-sided vehicles, 'cause there's quite limited capacity for high-sided vehicles," Cormier added.

Commercial traffic is using an additional night sailing, he noted.

'Limited frequency of sailings'

"But there's no doubt that the limited frequency of sailings is impacting on the volume of traffic that we'd normally be able to accommodate."

Some sailings are also running about an hour behind schedule, as the company has begun using extra decks for car traffic. They're called mezzanine or MacGregor decks, and Cormier said they take quite a while to deploy and move, but can handle more than 60 extra cars, bringing the ship's capacity to about 215 vehicles.

It could be another month before the MV Holiday Island is fixed and once again ready for service.

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