Interislander decision on charter ship

Today Interislander confirmed the charter of a ship to replace Aratere until a replacement tail-shaft is built and installed on Aratere in drydock early in the New Year.

The chartered ship, Stena Alegra, will be able to take passengers and cars as well as road freight. This will significantly reduce capacity constraints across Cook Strait until Aratere’s return to service.

However the severe lack of vehicle capacity in the critical lead-up before Christmas still remains.

The ship will take several weeks to sail from Poland where she is currently moored. There will be regulatory issues to resolve, crew training and some trial runs as a freight only ship before Stena Alegra can enter service as a passenger vessel. We currently anticipate that this will occur sometime in early January.

The good news is though that we will be busy for the next few days integrating the new ship into our timetable and shortly we will be able to open our booking system for new vehicle bookings in January to soon give visitors to New Zealand and domestic holidaymakers some certainty to their travel plans from early January onwards.

Please note that we are open to take new foot passenger bookings right throughout the busy Christmas period on at least one sailing on each date and in both directions.

We hope to have some vehicle space available for sale shortly for the period 25 Dec – 5 Jan on our remaining two ships when the freight demand slows down in the period immediately post-Christmas.

We will get further information on a revised timetable and any available vehicle capacity through to you as soon as possible.