The Coastal Celebration this weekend

We traveled up to the Spring Western Half Yearly Meeting of the Quakers this last weekend as we do every Victoria Day long weekend.   On Friday morning we ended up on the Coastal Celebration.   The ferry had hit the dock about a month ago and sustained some damage.    The ferry was put back into service this weekend even though it was not fixed.

The ferry could only be loaded from one end which meant the cars had to drive around the centre of the ship to load and unload.   This dramatically reduced the carrying capacity of the ship.   At either end there were no cars and the outside lane was not used at all.   My quick estimate is that the the capacity was reduced by 40%.

The Coastal Celebration was also not taking any commercial traffic on the weekend.

I have been on other ships that can only load from one end and they have cars park in the U-turn part. All I can assume is that the capacity was reduced

Oddly enough, this last weekend was not that busy at all even though one of the ships was operating well below its capacity.   On the Monday we drove up to the Tsawwassen terminal at 6:45 pm and managed to get on the 7 pm ferry and there was a lot of space left.   I am used to a 1-2 sailing wait in Tsawwassen on the holiday Monday.

So why is traffic down?   Have the rates risen too high and therefore causing people to think twice before taking the ferry?   I