Rock the boat

3:00pm from city via Devonport. Boat choc a bloc by the time it reached Devonport. Many people had their luggage on the seats (the offenders were mostly Waiheke people). No announcements from Fullers to remind passengers about taking up seats with luggage. Staff too busy trying to sort out who was drinking illicit (i.e. not purchased from Fullers) alcohol.

Party island

Stonyridge organised one of its dance parties on Saturday night, always a tense time for Fullers as it doesn't really control the numbers that will turn up, with sometimes disastrous results. Not that they object to selling more ferry tickets than they can actually transport since your ticket is not actually a guaranteed seat on the boat of your choice, just a vague promise to get you to Waiheke at some time in the future.
Things seemed to have gone smoothly, the 6pm Saturday Quickcat from town was not very full, just a happy band of party goers trying to dodge the still leaking airconditioning units: at least one booth of seats was blocked off by staff to prevent party frocks getting prematurely soaked.

This morning (Sunday) a few dozen were snoozing on the first boat back home, but I didn't hear anyone being stranded. I heard Stonyridge, sensibly, chartered a vessel for its clients.

Quick Quick Slow

I don't know what it is about Wednesdays but Fullers always decides to put the Quickcat on the Superflyte run at 8am ex Waiheke. My fellow wag commuters tell me that Superflyte is used for "maintenance training" at that time, whatever that means (new staff being trained how to pour wine in rough seas? How to ignore using the upper gang plank?).
The downside is that the 8am service is consistently late in arriving (it was 8:45 this morning) mainly due to the non-use of the upper gang plank to speed up embarkation at that busy commuter time. Lack of staff?

As an aside, a Belgian newspaper reports that the Belgian railyways infrastructure company Infrabel is going to be asked to repay 1 million euro in Government support back to the Government because it failed to comply with a plan to improve the punctuality of train traffic (only 90 percent of schedule trains arrive with a delay less than 5 minutes!)
They have ways of making the trains run on time! How about ways to make Auckland ferries arrive on time?

Groaning numbers (2)

I travelled on the 11am to Waiheke via Devonport this morning on a beautiful sunny day, ideal for day trippers. The numbers getting on Superflyte were substantial but not overloading. A good number were added at Devonport and there were very few seats left anywhere.
The trouble came at Matiatia where 3 buses (one of them an extra direct one to Onetangi) were really insufficient to transport the massive crowds. There was standing room only on all buses and surely some passengers were left stranded.
The disembarkation was via both ramps, I'm happy to see, but the large number of elderly passengers with mobility problems made it a still very longwinded process.

Groaning numbers

From Cathy: The 5:30pm from Auckland left at 5:36pm today, due to the sheer numbers getting on and off. It's my feeling that they can't handle the numbers operationally at the moment. I wouldn't mind, but there is rarely an apology for the late departure. With the Supergold subsidy plus all all the tourists, they must be doing very nicely thank you. We are paying a hugely inflated price for a crowded and untimely service at the moment!

$360,000 and useless

From Lynette: I came back on the 1pm ferry today after spending the morning at Auckland Hospital with an elderly friend. Being one of the smaller ferries it was unable to use our very expensive upper walkway at Matiatia. I would call it a cattle race but you would never have cattle so high up in the air.

Quickcat 3-day breakdown

The Quickcat finally gave out on Sunday night (4 January) and is expected to be back tonight (Wednesday). Nothing like sharing the Jet Raider with screaming children and people with suitcases full of unwanted Xmas presents. Needless to say the timetable has gone out of the window. You can now safely turn up late at the wharf but don't make time-sensitive appointments at the other end. Tuesday 6:30pm Auckland sailing left 20 mins late.

No word on what the actual fault was on Quickcat. My hunch is that the aircon finally ran out of water, so free showers were no longer on offer to passengers. See, 2009 is barely 7 days old and am already my cynical old self again.

The appalling Waiheke bus ride

When you come across subtle racism you don't often tend to notice it immediately, but when you're confronted with a blatant example, it tends to blow me away.

And that is what happened last night on the 6.45pm Onetangi bus.
The bus driver - Alan Davies who last year stood unsuccessfully for the community board and often makes submission at Waiheke community board meetings and is the Waiheke Island Grey Power branch chairman - took it on himself to check everybody's credentials to see whether they qualified for a discounted bus fare. So far so bureaucratically good, I hear you say. There was a mix of Waiheke high and Australian students wanting to get on, they did without trouble and got a student fare after showing their student ID.

When we got to the Red Cross, a Japanese student showed his Japanese student card but Mr Davies was unimpressed and insisted on a full fare, saying: "Only New Zealand high school student cards are valid for discounted fares". The student was bemused, got off the bus and decided to walk instead. Note that the Australian students earlier at Matiatia had no problem (they were young and pretty, always a good tactic).

Then at Blackpool, a mother and daughter got on and the daughter told Mr Davies she was a Waiheke High student but didn't have her student card on her. He let her board at a discounted fare without a murmur.

So do I conclude that Mr Davies is doing a sterling job in keeping the Yellow Peril off our Waiheke buses (and isn't that what we fought for in the War?) and can use discretion and racist attitudes in determining who rides on his bus and at what price?

Hence I have laid a formal complaint with the Waiheke Bus Company about this.

Dark passage

Quickcat 4:00pm sailing from City - lights went off just before berthing at Matiatia came back on after 2 – 3 minutes.

Showers expected

5:30pm boat from Auckland on Quickcat – airconditioning broke down spraying passengers.