Aratere Update

8 November 2011

Aratere Update

The Aratere has been cleared for freight sailings (both commercial vehicle and rail freight). It sailed at 0225 this morning and the next scheduled sailing is 1825 from Wellington. We are working with Maritime NZ to address some further issues and get clearance for passenger sailings.

We have a range of non-safety issues, including some under warranty from three different suppliers, to deal with including:

• Further work needed on main engine 2 (main engines 1,3 & 4 working as normal)

• Smaller engines 5 & 6 working fine to generate ship power, but causing problems when used for propulsion

• Some smaller non-engine related issues around the ship.

The Aratere is able to operate normally on three main engines, however we need to ensure either five or six is available for back-up propulsion.

Further sea trials will be scheduled for this week between freight sailings and the ship will also only be doing two return sailings per day instead of three.

The combination of this decision and not resuming passenger services allows more capacity for our engineering staff to be able to move freely around the ship to get testing completed and these issues fixed faster.

Interislander has also decided to transfer the Arahura and Aratere sailings to ensure less disruption to day sailings for passengers and freight.

We apologise to our customers for these disruptions and assure them we are working hard to get these issues resolved as quickly as possible.

ENDS

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