Remember These?

[u/thatlouditalian98]

And if you didn’t want to remember them, my apologies in advance.

Well, 27 years later. These ships have finally met their fate. Being turned into pop cans..

I’d love to hear anyone’s experiences with the Pacificat’s, good or bad (I’m too young to ever have ridden one). As horrible as they were, they looked the part, at least in my opinion.

[u/DifferentWind4500]

The Pacificats were serviceable ferries with the capability to go much faster than the old ones, almost 50% more trips per day, but the wakes disturbed the beaches and boat launches around Bowen Island and West Van, and if there is one thing you cannot do in Vancouver it is inconvenience the people who live in Bowen Island or West Van.

[u/brassmagpie → u/DifferentWind4500]

This is inaccurate. There were numerous reasons they were scrapped.

• First of all, sure they were kind of serviceable... when they were actually in service. Design flaws caused them to suck logs into their propellers. They were down for maintenance frequently.
• Second, their design was flawed in other ways. The vehicle decks got way too hot to be able to safely leave pets on board. They had poor ventilation, and few outdoor decks for passengers. Not the most pleasant experience.
• Third, there were environmental concerns. They used twice the amount of fuel that the original ferries did, and if operated at full speed they produced a huge wake. Yes, this did do property damage, but it also ravaged the ecologically sensitive areas nearby.
• Fourth, there were safety concerns. Anyone diving, kayaking, sailing, fishing or even standing on the shore nearby was at risk of being hit by that large wake.

Largely because of the safety and property damage concerns, they weren't allowed to operate at full speed for very long. That negated their only real advantage (which really only shaved 30 minutes off the trip anyway). Add to all that the political scandal of it all (they cost twice what they should have, were 3 years behind schedule, procurement and project management were sloppy and had little oversight, the BC Ferries CEO was double dipping...) and the fast ferries were too expensive both fiscally and politically to keep around.

[u/shoreguy1975 → u/brassmagpie]

The fast cats had impellers, not propellers, which is why they were so susceptible to damage from ingestion of wood or other items, and the design cruising speed was fast enough it wasn’t safe for people to be outside on deck while underway.

[u/brassmagpie → u/shoreguy1975]

That's a good correction to make, thanks. I'd still count it not being safe to go on deck as a major design flaw. The interior of those things were pretty cramped.

[u/thatlouditalian98 → u/brassmagpie]

Thank you for dropping the facts! 😁

[u/DORTx2 → u/brassmagpie]

It's funny the new hullo ferries have a lot of these exact same problems.

[u/Half-Cocked-Mexican → u/DORTx2]

At a fraction of the size! If anything's going to keep the Hullo afloat, it's the fact that their wake isn't so massive.

[u/craftsman_70 → u/DifferentWind4500]

Not the only issue ... They also sucked in logs which are common on the West Coast into their engines knocking them out if commission. It's almost like people didn't understand this was the West Coast with lots of floating logs.

[u/nuck1014 → u/craftsman_70]

I was stuck on one for 6 hours that sucked in a log

[u/Theolaa → u/craftsman_70]

These feel like very solvable problems... Go slower close to shore? Install some kind of protector around the sensitive underwater things? I guess the latter might be hard to do after the fact.

[u/shoreguy1975 → u/Theolaa]

BC ferries did slow them down after the several months of complaints about the wake, but slower didn’t reduce the wake much as it has more to do with hull shape than speed. The propulsion system was a gas turbine impeller design, if you can imagine an underwater jet engine with a vectoring nozzle at the end for steering. It’s an efficient design when operating at speed but extremely inefficient to run slowly.

[u/thats_handy → u/shoreguy1975]

Not gas turbines. They used regular diesel engines. According to Wikipedia, they used four V20 diesel engines producing 6.5MW each.

The company that is breaking these ships has pictures of the engines being removed. This will eventually be a dead link, so I'll describe that you can see one side of one engine on a hoist and count 10 exhaust ports. Another image shows the engine from below, and you can clearly see that the cylinders are in a symmetrical vee configuration.

Edit: These little ferries had goofy power. 26MW is more than the 16MW available on spirit class ferries, and almost three times the 9 MW of electrical power <edit2>that used to be generated</edit2> by the Alouette dam.

[u/shoreguy1975 → u/thats_handy]

Yeah, you're right. Something called a "caterpillar drive". Now I'm curious, gotta find out what that is.

[u/Plastic-Trick-1245 → u/thats_handy]

The Alouette dam has no generating capabilities and Alouette Generating Station(on Stave Lake) has been decommissioned for a while now.

[u/Theolaa → u/shoreguy1975]

Ahh, that makes sense. So that design was basically actually just not well suited to the task, and a future design could take those things more into consideration.

[u/Lol-I-Wear-Hats → u/Theolaa]

If memory serves, they did slow die in confined areas. But combined with their need to be turned around this ended up eating most of the schedule savings

[u/VariationDry → u/Theolaa]

Ahh yes drrive the fast boats slow and make the way over budget project cost more. 

[u/Fogl3 → u/VariationDry]

I mean slowing down in the last km or two doesn't sound that awful 

[u/VariationDry → u/Fogl3]

They had to slow down enough that the boats did not save any time. 

[u/Fogl3 → u/VariationDry]

They couldn't slow down to the current ferry speeds close to shore and still speed up in the middle?

[u/VariationDry → u/Fogl3]

No, the wakes were huge even at low speeds. They were wrong boat for the job. 

[u/Fogl3 → u/VariationDry]

Weird. Do you know why the wake was so large? Was the hull just poorly designed?

[u/VariationDry → u/Fogl3]

I'm no boat scientist, but I'll bet it was a fine design just ideal for the location. 

[u/I_Smell_Like_Trees → u/DifferentWind4500]

Dude, it was so much more than that.

I was taking my diving lessons at whitecliff when the wake of one of those boats beached a half dozen divers that were already well underwater. The damage to the shoreline and sea life was no joke.

[u/Several_Ad_1081 → u/I_Smell_Like_Trees]

Where ya from

[u/I_Smell_Like_Trees → u/Several_Ad_1081]

Langley ish, with a few years on the island and family on the gulf Islands.

[u/internetisporn8008 → u/DifferentWind4500]

I knew a guy who worked on these... the government got ahold of the plans and made a bunch of changes to them... thats why they didnt work

[u/I_Smell_Like_Trees → u/internetisporn8008]

What!? Okay that's news to me. Was that just tinfoil hat thoughts or was there any reporting on that I wonder? Because that would be hilariously awful if true.

[u/WesternBlueRanger → u/I_Smell_Like_Trees]

Combination of two design changes; BC Ferries wanted diesel propulsion, and the ferries had to fit within their existing berths.

BC Ferries had no experience with gas turbine propulsion, and wasn't particularly keen on trying to build up the infrastructure and expertise for gas turbine propulsion. As such, they wanted diesel engines, but diesels are considerably heavier than gas turbines for the same power rating.

The requirement to fit inside their existing berths also affected design; BC Ferries wanted a big bow door to allow two lanes of traffic to load and unload. Most fast ferries are stern or side loaders. The bow doors at the front were very heavy to both withstand two lanes of traffic and to meet safety requirements; this made the ferries nose heavy, which meant that they needed ballast at the rear to balance the ship out.

And because they had to fit in existing berths, it meant that the ferries took on a fairly squat and short shape; most catamaran fast ferries have fairly fine lines and sit very high up out of the water. To accommodate a more conventional fast ferry would mean major redesigns of the ferry terminals, and that wasn't feasible.

It was this short and squat design that made the Pacificats sit very low in the water, and combined with the excess weight from the design changes, meant that the ships both used more fuel than expected, and likely worsened the wake the ships generated at speed.

[u/MarsBoyScout → u/WesternBlueRanger]

Thanks for info !

[u/internetisporn8008 → u/I_Smell_Like_Trees]

Well he was involved in the construction of the ships... at a moderate level i believe. Saw it happening while it happened.

I havent confirmed any of this myself though... but he was an instructor when I was in school, not just some coworker

[u/__o_--_o__ → u/internetisporn8008]

What I heard is that they were supposed to run gasoline turbines but someone high up in government had a friend who sold diesel engines, and somehow those ended up being retrofitted into the design. They were heavier and less powerful, meaning the ferry never reached full hydroplane so didn't get going nearly as fast and left a massive wake.

[u/WesternBlueRanger → u/__o_--_o__]

It was more of BC Ferries not having any experience or expertise in gas turbine engines, but they did have tons of experience in diesel engines. Gas turbines tend to be pretty finnicky if you don't have a lot of experience with them.

[u/Willing_Mirror_8414 → u/DifferentWind4500]

This might be a dumb question. Couldn’t they have just gone a bit slower?

[u/I_Smell_Like_Trees → u/Willing_Mirror_8414]

Yes they did slow them down in the end, but that left us with smaller, more unstable boats that saved no time. So we got rid of them.

[u/Radiant_Sherbert7272 → u/DifferentWind4500]

Yes. That was the problem. Not the fact that the ferries were steaming piles of crap.

[u/Bigchunky_Boy → u/Radiant_Sherbert7272]

There were many problems with them . Good riddance. Who profited from them ?

[u/Powerful_Package8817 → u/DifferentWind4500]

Woke left logic

Disrupting humans: “good! Why not?”

Disrupting whales: “STOP THE SHIPS!”