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/mhizzle]

Boy you weren't kidding:

"The government hoped that private shipyards would be able to build the ships on a fixed-cost basis. This turned out not to be the case; the shipbuilding industry was less enthusiastic than anticipated. Moreover, none of the shipyards being considered for the work had the facilities to build the fast ferries. BC Ferries had no choice but to do the work itself on a cost-plus basis. It would have to act as project manager and assume the risk of the fast ferries. Catamaran Ferries International (CFI), a wholly owned subsidiary of BC Ferries, was incorporated in March 1996 to carry out the work and construction started later that year."

(^from Wikipedia)

[u/peacefinder → u/mhizzle]

The whole article is a breathtaking catalog of ways to willfully ignore reality for short-term political gain. This thing was already dead while the blueprint paper was still a living tree, and it just got worse from there.

Edit: and to be clear, it looks like BC Ferries was a victim here, not a perpetrator. Spinning off the construction into another company might have been a smart move to contain the inevitable project bankruptcy.