"Unacceptable" Lapses In Inspections And Paperwork Snafus Lead To Steamship Cancellations

Lapses in the inspections of several Steamship Authority vessels, as well as paperwork snafus by the boat line, prompted a series of cancellations on the Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard routes this month, leaving its governing board incredulous.

The cancellations were called "preventable and unacceptable" by Peter J. Jeffrey, the chair of the Steamship Authority's Board of Governors, during the board's meeting on Nantucket on Tuesday. It was disclosed that one staff member has been fired as a result of the situation.

In another remarkable revelation at Tuesday's meeting, SSA general manager Alex Kryska told his board that the M/V Barnstable, one of the boat line's new freight vessels, lost both of its rear gates overboard because they had not been properly secured as it was sailing from Fairhaven to Hyannis on Thursday, Sept. 10. The gates have since been located on the sea floor and will be recovered by divers. 

"The last few weeks have been very challenging operationally for the Steamship Authority," Kryska acknowledged to the Board of Governors on Tuesday. "We're going to take a step back and relook at our entire operation from soup to nuts, and that's something that we're going to be starting immediately."

The inspection lapses and certificate issues affected three Steamship Authority vessels, including the M/V Woods Hole and M/V Monomoy on the Nantucket route, as well as the M/V Island Home on the Vineyard route.

The M/V Monomoy's trips to and from Nantucket were canceled on Sept. 1. Kryska said the problem was that the vessel’s quarterly inspection schedule had not been followed in accordance with the SSA's established procedures. When the lack of inspection was discovered by the U.S. Coast Guard, the federal agency required the vessel to be pulled out of service. The same issue was discovered affecting the M/V Woods Hole, but the Coast Guard was on board and "was able to rectify that immediately and let the boat sail," Kryska said. 

Last week, the M/V Island Home on the Martha's Vineyard route ran into trouble and had to be taken out of service when Steamship staff learned that the vessel’s radiotelephony certificate, required by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the vessel’s operation, had expired.

The problem with the M/V Island Home certificate was discovered by the Steamship Authority's marine and engineering staff during a review of regulatory paperwork that was initiated after the M/V Monomoy incident earlier in September.

"I’ll be frank: it’s unacceptable that two vessels in as many weeks have been sidelined by what are, essentially, paperwork issues," Kryska stated in a letter posted on the Steamship Authority website. "I’m angry about it, as are many of our staff members, but it’s also an opportunity for us to improve how we do business."

On Tuesday, he addressed the situation to the Board of Governors during his general manager's report.

"We have since gone through and started looking at all vessel documentation to ensure that we're in compliance with everything," Kryska said. "As part of that, we found that the (M/V) Island Home also had an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) license that had expired in July. This is a 10-year license, so we should have known about it coming for a long time...We had to pull her from service on Saturday, which was a major issue because she's our largest vessel, and we were able to bring the (M/V) Martha's Vineyard back from Fairhaven to fill her place. But we missed a number of runs, and the Martha's Vineyard is smaller than the Island Home, so we're spending a lot of time playing catch-up throughout the day, throughout the weekend. The Island Home is returning service today. We did get the FCC license this morning."

Kryska added that he asked all of the Steamship Authority's captains to pull the documentation from their vessels and send it to the boat line's marine operations department in order to categorize them into a system so it can be tracked.

"This is a major downfall on our part," Kryska said. 

Answering specific questions from Ted Gavin, who represents Martha's Vineyard on the Steamship Authority Board of Governors, Kryska acknowledged that the person responsible for the inspection certificates had been relieved of their duties and ultimately fired by the boat line.

"We have taken immediate action to rectify the challenges we have right now, but I think our next step is to ensure it doesn't happen again," Kryska said.

Mark Amundsen, the Steamship's chief operating officer, also took responsibility for the situation at the end of Tuesday's meeting.

"From the operations point of view, this is indefensible," Amundsen said. "The certificates for the vessels are, without them, we can't perform our core functions, and I take responsibility for this as well, being the head of operations."