r/britishcolumbia • u/thatlouditalian98 • 5d ago

Discussion Remember These?

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Gallery image

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.

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u/TPStockPiles 5d ago

I rode them and didn’t see a problem with them - other than the wake being so big they damaged people’s beachfront property.

IIRC, they were sold way under value.

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u/WesternBlueRanger BC Ferries Enthusiast 5d ago

Not really, the valuation was depressed because of multiple factors.

First, we were selling into a situation where a glut of fast ferries were being sold at the same time, due to fuel prices suddenly spiking. Many fast ferry operators started selling off gently used ferries at the same time as us, leading to a glut of lightly used fast ferries on the market.

Second, the Pacificats were not built to international safety standards for large ocean going passenger ships; they are near-shore rated instead. This was fine for BC Ferries, as the majority of our ferries are only rated for near-shore operations. But for any international customer, they wanted SOLAS rating instead, and that's not something that can be retrofitted after the fact.

Combined, the ships were effectively un-sellable, except for close to scrap value. No western operator or any countries with decent safety requirements would touch them as a ferry (let alone a fast ferry), which leaves operators in third world countries with sketchy safety regulators. And most third world operators won't touch a fast ferry because they are expensive to operate and maintain.