Bleak future for The Cat
Last month, The Cat made her last trips from Maine to Nova Scotia before packing it up for the season. There’s plenty of reason to fear the high-speed catamaran won’t be back next year.
Our region’s long-haul ferries had a brutal season. Battered by sky-high fuel prices and a downturn in U.S. travel to Canada, the private-sector car ferries that bridge the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy are on government life support, while prices have soared on the government-run services that connect Newfoundland to the rest of the continent.
In August, federal and provincial authorities approved over $15 million Canadian in subsidies to rescue the year-around ferry service connecting Digby, N.S. to Saint John, N.B. The service, which is operated by The Cat‘s owners, Bay Ferries Ltd., is considered essential infrastructure by the people of Southwestern Nova Scotia. Marine Atlantic, the public corporation that connects Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, has imposed fuel surcharges totaling 27.7 percent since July 2007, triggering condemnation from provincial officials.
But The Cat has been hit hardest, on account of both its thirst (it consumes over 1,300 gallons an hour) and its dependence on Canada-bound U.S. tourists (who are rarer now than at any time since record-keeping began 36 years ago.)
The vessel barely made it through the season. Passenger counts from Portland were off by 17.5 percent in June, compared to the previous year, and 15.5 percent in July, according to city statistics. Demand on the Bar Harbor to Yarmouth route (which The Cat made three to four days a week) had also softened, while diesel prices had doubled.
In early July, The Cat‘s owners were going to pull the plug until the government of Nova Scotia stepped in with $4.4 million in emergency subsidies. Just seven weeks later, Bay Ferries cancelled two trips a week to Portland and Bar Harbor and announced it would end its season eight days early.
“Both routes would not have been feasible without some government assistance,” says Don Cormier, vice president of operations at Bay Ferries, which is based in Charlottetown, P.E.I. “Discussing next season calls for a lot of speculation that I’m not going to do.”
“The government didn’t want to see the service stop in the middle of the season, all of a sudden,” says Tom Peck, director of communications at the Nova Scotia Ministry of Economic Development in Halifax. “I don’t think there’s anything being committed beyond what’s already been done.”
Like other high-speed ferries around the world, The Cat has become an endangered animal. With sky-high diesel prices, sending 250 cars, 900 people, and a 6,500-ton ship hurtling across the Gulf of Maine at speeds in excess of 50 miles an hour may be an idea whose time has passed.
“One of the big problems all high speed ferries are facing today is that their business plans weren’t designed for the kind of fuel prices they are seeing at the moment,” says Christopher Wright, president of Mariport Group Ltd., a passenger ferry consultancy based in Digby, N.S. with clients worldwide. “It’s certainly not the world it was when fast ferries started.”
Wright notes that fast ferry service developed in the 1990s, a time when inflation-adjusted fuel prices were depressed. Facing challenges from low-cost air carriers, ferry companies introduced high-speed vessels on many routes, including wave-piercing catamarans like The Cat, built by the Tasmanian company Incat.
When Bay Ferries first came to Maine in 1997, diesel cost 80 cents a gallon, and ticket prices have risen with the price of oil. This summer a round-trip ticket between Portland and Yarmouth for two adults and a small car set one back $764 including fees, surcharges, and a round-trip discount. Demand softened, made worse by a weak U.S. dollar and public confusion over new passport requirements to re-enter the country.
The Cat is hardly alone. Ferry operators worldwide have been scaling back fast-ferry operations in recent years, replacing some with conventional ferries and raising prices on the others. In recent years Stena Lines has axed one of three daily fast-ferry trips across the Irish Sea and slowed travel speeds on others. This May, fuel costs prompted SuperFast Ferries to cancel its Scotland to Belgium service, and DFDS Seaways to cut three UK routes.
“Higher fuel prices have been hitting harder on the fast ones than on the conventional ferries,” says Jesper Waltersson, communications manager at Stena Line headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden, who says the long-haul routes tend to be particularly challenging for fast ferries.
On the Portland to Yarmouth route, some believe many customers may also have preferred the spacious, leisurely trip on the old Scotia Prince (which took 11 hours) to the airline-like experience on The Cat (which takes only 6.)
“We talked to a lot of people from the U.S. who have family homes in Nova Scotia and they all said how much they regretted the loss of the Scotia Prince,” says Mr. Wright of Mariport. “They enjoyed the experience. There seemed to be a cultural aspect where, on their first voyage of the season, they met their old friends and had a drink and when they got to Yarmouth they were on vacation. We didn’t have people expressing the same thing about The Cat.”
“The Scotia Prince was set up as a sort of entertainment ship, with casinos and shows on board,” notes Mr. Peck. “The trip itself could be an experience, whereas The Cat just gets you there fast.”
Barring a radical slump in fuel prices, keeping The Cat running to Maine will likely require more government assistance. It may not be forthcoming.
Using taxpayer money to prop up a private, for-profit enterprise has its political challenges, even in Canada, which is one of the reasons some Canadian officials would like to see Bay Ferries’ Saint John-Digby service re-nationalized. “Any time a private company find it a little hard, they’re gonna shut things down and then we have to have this big fight around here to try to save it,” says Harold Theriault, who represents the Digby area in the Nova Scotia legislature. “I don’t think it would be so controversial if it were under the government.”
Unfortunately, The Cat‘s seasonal routes to Maine, while important, may not have as compelling a case for government intervention.
Asked if The Cat was considered essential service, Maryse Durette, a spokesperson for Transport Canada in Ottawa reiterated the central tenants of the 1995 National Marine Policy: “that the government should continue to support ferry services that have a constitutional guarantee” – i.e., those to Newfoundland – “and commercialize all other ferry services.”
Peck said there were no active discussions about additional subsidies from Nova Scotia, and John Richardson, Maine’s commissioner for Economic and Community Development, has indicated that the ferry is a low priority, given the state’s other needs. Don Cormier, at Bay Ferries, declined to speculate on future assistance.
Losing the ferry service would be have serious economic consequences on both sides of the Gulf of Maine, as it represents a primary conduit for tourists bound for Nova Scotia, some of whom break their journey in Portland or Bar Harbor. But it’s the taxpayers of Portland who may take the biggest hit.
Because the city’s new $21 million Ocean Gateway Terminal was built without a deepwater berth, medium and large cruise ships cannot tie up there, and The Cat is essentially its only customer. The terminal already was already running at least a $300,000 a year loss, once both operational and construction debt payments were accounted for, according to figures provided by city spokesperson Nicole Clegg. If The Cat were to leave-something it can do at any time under its lease agreement-city taxpayers would be out another $100,000 annually.
Of course anything can happen. Maybe someone will buy the old Scotia Prince and bring her home to Portland. She’s in the Mediterranean now, running passengers from Spain to Tunisia, but she’s available for lease or sale starting this month, if anyone’s interested.
Colin Woodard is an award-winning journalist and author of The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean’s End. For more about his work: www.colinwoodard.com