Will The Cat come back?
After 38 years, ferry service to Nova Scotia may end this month

By Colin Woodard

 

On October 3, The Cat will blow her horn, pull away from her berth at Ocean Gateway, and head off the harbor for the last time this season. 

Government officials, business owners and travelers on both sides of the Gulf of Maine have good reason to wonder if she’ll ever return.

Battered by soaring fuel prices and a sharp decline in U.S. travel to Canada, The Cat barely made it through this season. Passenger counts were down 17.5 percent in June, compared to the previous year, and 15.6 percent in July. Fuel prices have doubled since the summer of 2007. 

In early July, the high-speed catamaran’s owner — Bay Ferries Ltd., of Prince Edward Island — was going to pull the plug until the government of Nova Scotia stepped in with $4.4 million (Canadian) in emergency subsidies. Several weeks later, Bay Ferries cancelled two weekly trips between Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and announced it would end its season eight days early.

“Both routes would not have been feasible without some government assistance,” said Don Cormier, vice president of operations at Bay Ferries. “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,” said 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 high-speed ferries operating in other parts of the world, The Cat has become an endangered animal. With marine diesel at $4.50 a gallon, sending 250 cars and 900 people aboard a 6,500-ton ship hurtling across the Gulf of Maine at speeds in excess of 50 m.p.h. 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,” said Christopher Wright, president of Mariport Group Ltd., a passenger ferry consultancy based in Digby, N.S., that has clients worldwide. “It’s certainly not the world it was when fast ferries started.”

Fast-ferry service took hold in the 1990s, a time when inflation-adjusted fuel prices were depressed, Wright noted. 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.

Bay Ferries embraced the trend after it won the right to take over the daily Bar Harbor-to-Yarmouth service from the Canadian government in 1997. The government-subsidized Bluenose, a 13,000-ton conventional ferry, was replaced with a 5,600-ton Incat catamaran, also named The Cat. 

With 80-cent-per-gallon diesel and a booming economy, business was good, and in 2002, the company bought the larger Cat currently running between Maine and Canada. Two years later, Bay Ferries was ready to go head-to-head with Scotia Prince Cruises, whose 12,000-ton, cruise-ship style car ferry, the Scotia Prince, had been making the Portland-to-Yarmouth run since 1982. (Seasonal ferry service between Portland and Yarmouth first began in 1970, with the Prince of Fundy.)

Bay Ferries’ timing was prescient. Scotia Prince Cruises and the city were then entering a protracted dispute over mold contamination at the International Marine Terminal. Ridership aboard the Prince had plunged since 2002, due in part to concerns about terrorism and border-security hassles. And the agreement that had given Scotia Prince Cruises an exclusive right to use Portland’s public terminal for runs to Yarmouth was being challenged by city and federal officials, as well as Bay Ferries. 

In the spring of 2005, Scotia Prince Cruises abruptly cancelled its season and filed suit against the city for $20 million over the mold issue. (The city ended up paying the ferry company $1.2 million.) 

So when The Cat arrived in Portland in 2006, she had no competition for her three weekly runs to Yarmouth. But the cost of feeding her 38,000-horsepower engines had shot up steeply. 

Ticket prices were set accordingly, and have been raised every year since. This season, a round-trip ticket for two adults and a small car costs $764, including fees, surcharges, and a round-trip discount. Demand has continued to soften, made worse by a weak U.S. dollar and confusion over new passport requirements to re-enter the U.S..

“I respect and have great empathy for the position Bay Ferries is in,” said Portland Mayor Ed Suslovic. “They’ve demonstrated commitment for this service and have hung in there, and I think they believe the demand is there in the long term. But they’ve got a tough row to hoe — not only with their own energy costs, but because this is a service largely dependent on people driving some distance to Portland, then taking their car with them and driving some distance in Nova Scotia, where gas prices are even higher. 

“That’s not an easy business to be in at this point,” he said.

 

Bay Ferries is hardly alone in its struggle. Ferry operators worldwide have been scaling back fast-ferry operations in recent years, replacing some with conventional ferries and raising prices on others.

 In recent years, Stena Lines axed one of three daily fast-ferry trips across the Irish Sea, raised ticket prices and slowed travel speeds on other routes. This May, fuel costs prompted Superfast Ferries to cancel its Scotland-to-Belgium service, and DFDS Seaways to cut one of its three U.K. routes. 

“Higher fuel prices have been hitting harder on the fast ones than on the conventional ferries,” said Jesper Waltersson, communications manager at Stena Line headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden, who added that long-haul routes tend to be particularly challenging for fast ferries.

“Companies are finding that people are happy to take a longer trip on a conventional ferry because they are more economical,” said Wright, the consultant with Mariport Group. “People are reverting back to the way they used to travel.”

In fact, conventional ferries are feeling the pinch, as well, particularly in our region. Bay Ferries runs a conventional 10,000-ton ferry, the Princess of Acadia, year-round between Saint John, N.B., and Digby, N.S., a run that is considered fundamental infrastructure by the people of southwestern Nova Scotia. Even so, with traffic down and costs up, it’s no longer commercially viable, and would have been discontinued if the provincial and federal governments had not come up with $15 million (Canadian) in subsidies this August to keep it going. 

Barring a significant drop 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, where some lawmakers want to bring privatized ferry operations on critical routes back under government control. 

“When costs rise and traffic falls, we don’t go tear up the bridges and roads,” said Harold Theriault, a retired lobsterman who represents the Digby area in the Nova Scotia Legislature and believes the government should take back the Digby-to-Saint John run from Bay Ferries. “Any time a private company finds 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,” he said. “I don’t think it would be so controversial if it were under the government.”

The Cat’s seasonal routes to Maine — while important to the tourism industry — are not as compelling a case for government intervention. The Portland-Yarmouth run was never a government service, and the Bar Harbor-Yarmouth route is apparently not considered essential by Canadian or Maine officials. 

Portland and Nova Scotia provincial officials said last month that there had been no formal discussion of additional subsidies. John Richardson, commissioner of the Maine Department of Economic and Community Development, told the Portland Press Herald in July that money for Bay Ferries would be a low priority, given other state transportation needs. 

Bay Ferries executive Cormier declined to speculate on future assistance.

What is certain is that the loss of The Cat would hurt local economies on both sides of the gulf. 

 For Nova Scotia, it would represent the loss of one of the primary ways Americans reach the southern half of the province. The government of Nova Scotia has said losing the service would be a “major blow to the economy of Yarmouth” — where Bay Ferries employs 100 people — “and the surrounding area.” 

Though relatively few Canadians use The Cat to visit Portland, many Americans traveling to and from Yarmouth spend the night here, as the ferry arrives late and departs early. “We’re getting an awful lot of hotel-night stays on both ends of the trip,” said Suslovic. “The Cat brings people who spend money in restaurants, perhaps visit our museums, and that’s good business for Portland.”

But it’s Portland taxpayers who stand to take the biggest hit. 

Ocean Gateway lacks a berth large enough to dock most cruise ships, so The Cat is essentially its only customer. (Cruise ships tie up at the Maine State Pier.) The city is still paying about $300,000 every year to service the terminal’s debt, and annual operational costs approach $200,000. 

The city’s revenue from Bay Ferries is tied to passenger counts. Last season, the city received $86,906 from Bay Ferries, less than half what officials were expecting. This year, the city stands to get less than that, due to the fall in demand. 

If Bay Ferries cancels next season — which it can do under its lease by proving financial hardship — Portland taxpayers will likely be shelling out more than $400,000 a year for Ocean Gateway. That’s because without The Cat, the terminal’s use would be largely limited to hosting wedding receptions and other functions — until such a time as a larger, multi-million-dollar berth is built. 

To book your party at Ocean Gateway, call City Hall at 874-8200.   

 

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Portland journalist Colin Woodard is the author of The Lobster Coast, The Republic of Pirates, and Ocean’s End. For more about his work, visit colinwoodard.com.