With Ferry Overbooked, Steamship Offers Deals To Get Passengers Off Boat

How much would the Steamship have to offer you to get off the ferry you just boarded and had a reservation for?

On Sunday afternoon, roughly two dozen people found out. In what a Steamship representative called “an honest, unusual mistake,” the 12:30 p.m. trip from Nantucket to Hyannis aboard the fast ferry, the M/V Iyanough, was overbooked with passengers.

The captain began “asking people to get off,” said island resident Kathy Malloy, who was aboard the Iyanough when the captain said the boat was overbooked by 24 people. There were “no volunteers. Offered one free ticket, and got five volunteers...It was a standoff. He walked around asking for volunteers but no one did. We were 30 minutes late and the captain said ‘not moving until people get off’.”

Molloy told the Current that the Steamship then upped its offer to include a full refund, and one free round-trip ticket. The boat erupted in cheers as several more people took them up on the offer.

“Everyone cheered and the dogs barked once people started getting off,” said Maureen Malavase, another passenger.

Eventually they got enough volunteers to take the deal, and the boat left Steamboat Wharf about 34 minutes late.

“Never happened in my 44 years riding the boat,” Molloy said.

So why did it happen?

The M/V Iyanough has a capacity of 400 passengers and crew. But that requires a full complement of so-called “able bodied seamen” among the crew, according to Coast Guard regulations. For the 12:30 trip on Sunday, however, the crew was down one staff member, reducing the boat's capacity to 299, according to Nat Lowell, Nantucket’s representative on the Steamship Authority Port Council. The boat was ticketed and boarded as if it had a full crew, and it’s unclear exactly how the oversight occurred. Lowell called it an “unfortunate mistake.”

“It’s an honest, unusual mistake,” Lowell added. “But it's better than a continuation of the weather we were having or a mechanical breakdown. We live on an island and these things happen.”

No similar issues were reported before or after that 12:30 p.m. trip on Sunday.