Cat still idle at dock in Bar Harbor> Company denies ferry hit anything while at sea

BAR HARBOR — For the second day in a row, passengers trying to take the ferry to Nova Scotia were turned away at the ticket gate. The Cat remained dockside while engineers tried to fix a motion sensor that broke away from the vessel and sank Monday.

Ticket agents did their best to mollify miffed customers, and company officials spent the day quashing rumors about why The Cat sat, again. Nearly 2,000 passengers had made advance bookings to ride the high-speed ferry Tuesday and Wednesday.

“We’ve heard we’ve hit whales and that the ship’s going to sink,” said ticket agent Becky Bland of Bay Ferries Ltd., the company that brought the $44 million vessel over from Tasmania, Australia, this spring.

Officials were hopeful Wednesday the boat would head out to sea Thursday, but advised passengers to confirm the departure with the company.

Company representatives also stood firmly behind earlier explanations that The Cat did not hit anything, such as a whale in the water, and said that engineers were simply building another motion sensor to replace the one that broke away from the port bow on Monday night’s crossing. Called a T-foil, the sensor is a 12-foot-long, 20-foot-wide device that protrudes from the bow and helps engineers determine whether the boat is balanced. Although The Cat can function without it, the ride would be rockier.

Coast Guard inspectors and divers from Bay Ferries Ltd. inspected the boat Monday night and Tuesday to determine the damage done to The Cat when the T-foil broke off and to determine how it could have broken away.

Their preliminary investigation revealed an 8-inch gash in the port hull, said Lt. Anthony Curry, supervisor of the Coast Guard Marine Safety Field Office in Bucksport. Curry said it appears the gash was caused when the T-foil broke off its mounting and was flung back into the hull.

Curry said investigators could not determine whether the T-foil broke free because of stress (the boat recently made the journey from Tasmania to Canada in rough seas) or because The Cat struck something.

A Coast Guard plane sent out Tuesday to look for anything floating in the water that The Cat may have struck revealed nothing unusual, Curry said.

Because The Cat is registered under the flag of the Bahamas, and because its master is certified in Canada, Curry said, marine officials from those countries also were looking into the incident.

Miller argued Wednesday that had The Cat struck a whale, dolphin or even a log, the damage to its aluminum hull likely would have been more substantial.

“We didn’t hit a whale. If we had hit a log or a whale there would be damage to the hull or pontoon. And there’s no damage to the hull or the pontoon other than an 8-inch gash,” Miller said. Miller added that The Cat travels at speeds of up to 55 mph during much of its 2 1/2-hour crossing. “When something like a T-foil comes off and hits the side of an aluminum craft, it’s going to cause a dent or a gash,” he said.

Around the terminal Wednesday, the moods of thwarted passengers ranged from unfazed to ticked off.

Some passengers chose to drive four hours north and take the Princess of Acadia ferry from St. John, New Brunswick, to Digby, Nova Scotia — about 45 minutes away from Yarmouth. Others, such as Kathy and Glenn Andrews of Toronto who drove from Portland to make the 3:30 p.m. crossing, balked at the idea of more driving.

“We just drove four hours to get here,” said Kathy Andrews, as her two daughters tugged at her hands. “They can’t sit still any longer.”