No guarantees for Christmas Cook Strait crossings

A lost propeller in the Cook Strait may cause serious delays this Christmas, with one of the three Government operated Interislander ferries being taking out of action for the indefinite future.

Speaking on TV3's The Nation this weekend outgoing CEO of KiwiRail Jim Quinn, described the out-of -service Aratere Ferry as the "work horse of the fleet" and said the ferry will be out of action for months, despite heading into the busy Christmas and summer period.

"The good news is that period just on Christmas is when the freight drops away and that gives us much more capacity in our ships, and our competitors too, because the trucks and train freight drop away. So right at that point for the next few weeks after that, yes there is a lot of passenger demand, but fortunately the freight drops away as well.

Mr Quinn could not guarantee that some passengers would miss out because of the lower capacity.

"What most folk don't know is the ferry is the work horse of the fleet. It travels the Cook Strait the most and so I guess on probabilities it will have more problems in that regard, but we don't know what's caused this, and the important thing first is to look at it and not assumed its linked with things, look at it with an open mind and understand it," says Mr Quinn

Mr Quinn says a snapped shaft caused a propeller to fall off the ferry during a crossing earlier this week. Mr Quinn conceded the Aratere Ferry has had several problems over the years - but says none of them have been directly connected and the loss of a propeller is "not unheard of but unusual".

Winston Peters labelled the ferry "a disaster waiting to happen".

Mr Quinn says it will take two or three weeks to work through the congestion and bookings for the ferries have been frozen for the time being.

He says it is not a simple matter of bringing in a replacement boat.

"You think it would be as easy as that. There is not a rental boast agency here and most of them would have to come from overseas, in fact all of them would. That requires them to be approved to sail here, the prcess around that is, quite correctly, quite a laborious one. There's no chance at all there would be something here before January."