BC Ferries cancels more sailings due to lack of available staff

Getting home early for the holidays might not be in the cards this year, as a severe winter storm has prompted BC Ferries to cancel several sailings scheduled for Friday.

Key routes, like Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay, and Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay and Duke Point, have multiple sailings cut.

Smaller routes are also seeing mass cancellations as well.

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On Thursday, the ferry service pre-emptively cancelled the morning sailings for Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay, beginning at 5:15 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

This comes after several of Thursday’s sailings faced significant weather-related delays.

BC Ferries has since cancelled several more sailings on the same route, as it says it was unable to “secure the required number of staff” for its Coastal Renaissance and Queen of New Westminster vessels.

Director of Public Affairs Deborah Marshall tells CityNews sailings were also cancelled due to poor road conditions getting to and from terminals.

“If anybody is planning on traveling over the next couple of days, I would suggest they do check our website before they head out. There may be some service interruptions over the next couple of days due to the weather conditions,” she said.

Marshall says the ferry service anticipates that sailings will come back online later Friday and into Saturday, as the forecasted freezing rain turns into rain as temperatures rise.

#ServiceNotice We have been unsuccessful in securing required number of crew on #QofNewWest & #CoastalRen, below sailings today are now cancelled:

12:00pm/2:00pm/6:00pm/10:00pm ex. #SwartzBay
12:00pm/2:00pm/4:00pm/8:00pm ex. #Tsawwassen

Full notice: https://t.co/LDPe5VPBwK^sn

— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) December 23, 2022

“We did see the update from the Ministry of Transportation on highways yesterday, advising that if people don’t need to travel today and early tomorrow morning, they should avoid that. … So if customers do need to travel, do check our website and make sure they have the most up to date information. But safety is a priority. We know that our employees have to travel the same roads as our customers, and everybody is trying to get to where they need to go as safely as possible,” she said.

As the holiday period is one of the busiest times of the year for the service, Marshall says she hopes BC Ferries will be able to deliver its committed extra sailings Saturday onwards through the New Year.

“We’ve already scheduled extra sailings over the holidays, and we are certainly hopeful we’ll be able to live up to that commitment. [But] that it will depend on whether iwe do need to cancel in the name of safety, then we’ll have to do that.”

That's all for today. We are back bright & early tomorrow morning at 7:00 am.

Our #CurrentConditions can be found here: https://t.co/xU9peIbyWA.

Service Notices can be found here: https://t.co/cxdEQIdxzQ.

Travel Advisories can be found here: https://t.co/lzNDZo0bDb. ^jr pic.twitter.com/wiD7puCeB7

— BC Ferries (@BCFerries) December 23, 2022

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