“The built-in redundancy meant a back-up system took over within seconds of the fault,” he said.
The fault was unusual, Rushbrook said.
Later that evening, the ship departed Picton to sail back to Wellington. It travelled a short distance down the Marlborough Sounds before a decision was made to turn back because of forecast bad weather.
All Cook Strait ferries are cancelled today as Cyclone Gabrielle makes its way across the North Island.
Rushbrook said further testing was being done while the ship was in Picton as a precaution. It will sail as a freight-only ship for its first voyage back into service.
A Maritime NZ spokesperson confirmed they were contacted by the Interislander at 6.28pm advising of the loss of power.
“Our team is making inquiries around what occurred,” the spokesperson said.
“No rescue assets were needed.”
Two weeks ago, the Kaitaki ferry lost power to all four engines in the Cook Strait and declared a mayday with 864 people on board.
Luckily, power was restored enough for the ferry to limp back to Wellington alongside several vessels that had rushed to help.
Rushbrook said KiwiRail would not sail unless it was safe to do so.
“However, the decision is not made by us alone. The shipping industry is highly regulated and all of our ships are subject to independent audits by Maritime New Zealand and Class Authorities.”
Harbourmaster Grant Nalder provided an update on the Aratere and Kaitaki incidents at a Greater Wellington Regional Council finance, risk and assurance committee this morning.
He confirmed that the problem with the Aratere was an electrical fault.
“They had power restored very quickly, they had propulsion restored within a few minutes, then took the time to get everything else checked over before they started moving off.”
As a precaution, the ferry went around the northern entrance of the Marlborough Sounds, which was standard procedure, Nalder said.
Nalder said the Kaitaki situation was a known risk and the risk remained unchanged.
“All that’s changed is now it has happened rather than it being theoretical.”
Regional councillor Ros Connelly questioned whether the risk remained unchanged considering the ferries were ageing and increasingly unreliable.
“So potentially the likelihood of risk is just going to increase as they see out the last few months and years of their practical life,” she said.
Nalder stressed the ferries had to meet the same standards regardless of how old they were.
“So for the operators, when they have older ships, that means they have higher maintenance costs. There is a lot of maintenance that goes on on the ships.
“Whether they are one year old or 30 years old, there is no allowance for age in terms of performance.”
Nalder suggested the Kaitaki was one of the safest ships at the moment because engineers had “crawled over everything” on it.
