Delay mars Vision's maiden voyage

A five-hour delay on the MV Atlantic Vision's maiden voyage wasn't the result of a bad April Fool's joke.

Tara Laing, communications officer for Marine Atlantic, said the vessel was late leaving North Sydney due in part to a tractor-trailer that got snagged on the bow ramp of the vessel Wednesday morning.

The MV Joseph and Clara Smallwood arrived in North Sydney and unloaded before it left the dock, freeing the ramp for the Vision.

Ms. Laing said that ate into the schedule a bit. Being the first time cars, drop trailers and tractor-trailers were loaded on the Vision, she said it took longer than it will in the future. She said near the end of the loading process, a trailer with low legs got stuck when a truck was boarding the vessel.

According to Ms. Laing, those three events created the delay in departure from 11:30 p.m. Tuesday to 5 a.m. Wednesday.

She said a tow truck was called to remove the vehicle from the ramp. There was no damage to the vessel in the incident.

"We anticipated there would be growing pains with the (Atlantic Vision)," Ms. Laing said.

"This is one of them, so we're going to move forward to make corrections, possibly from an operations point of view as well as any other changes that are required to correct it."

Ms. Laing, who was on board the Atlantic Vision for its maiden voyage, said from the time of acquisition, getting the superferry into service took about a year.

"We now have adequate capacity on the service," she said. "There are going to be challenges, but we have time to go through the learning process before we hit our peak season."

Ms. Laing said once the loading process was complete, the initial crossing went smoothly.