M/V Gay Head to Resume Service Thursday

M/V GAY HEAD TO RESUME SERVICE THURSDAY

Repairs are under way on the M/V Gay Head at Thames Shipyard in New London, Connecticut. The repair consists of the removal and renewal of a section of the vessel’s steel hull measuring 18 inches by 24 inches. The vessel will be undocked on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, and will return to Hyannis later that same day. The M/V Gay Head will resume service on the Nantucket route Thursday, starting with its scheduled 5:30 a.m. departure from Hyannis.

Also starting Thursday, the M/V Sankaty will remain on the Martha’s Vineyard route and resume its published schedule. Booking is now reopened for automobile reservations on the Vineyard route. Online automobile reservations remain shut down on the Nantucket route to allow our Reservation Office the ability to better accommodate reservations from the week that have yet to be rescheduled. We anticipate online booking to resume on Friday at the latest; customers should continue to check www.steamshipauthority.com for updates. Customers on the Nantucket route with urgent travel needs can call the Reservation Office at (508) 477-8600 for assistance. As a reminder, passengers for our traditional ferry service do not require reservations, and passenger reservations for our high-speed ferry are unaffected.

We thank our customers, particularly our commercial freight customers, for their patience during this period.

Original release follows below:

FALMOUTH (July 29, 2022) – Following the discovery of a small amount of water in the steering gear void of the M/V Gay Head, a survey of the vessel’s hull discovered a 4-inch crack in the hull on the vessel’s aft. Although the crack is above the waterline, the repair will require the vessel to be dry docked at Thames Shipyard in New London, Connecticut, for replacement of the structural steel. The vessel is now at the Authority’s Fairhaven repair facility and will sail to Thames on Monday morning.

As a result, the following service adjustments will be in place:

• Following the last scheduled round trip of the M/V Sankaty this afternoon, the vessel will leave Woods Hole and arrive in Hyannis before completing one round trip to Nantucket.
• The M/V Sankaty will service the M/V Gay Head’s trips on the Nantucket route on Saturday and Sunday. The vessel is not scheduled to run on the weekends on the Vineyard route, so no trips will be missed.
• Sunday evening, the M/V Sankaty will make the M/V Gay Head’s last scheduled departure from Nantucket at 6:45 p.m. but will sail to Woods Hole instead of Hyannis. The vessel will berth in Woods Hole overnight.
• The M/V Sankaty will run its first two scheduled round-trips on the Vineyard route on Monday morning. The third round-trip, leaving Woods Hole at 11:30 a.m. and leaving Vineyard Haven at 12:45 p.m., will be canceled.
• Following its scheduled arrival in Woods Hole at 11 a.m., the M/V Sankaty will load and depart to Nantucket, leaving at 11:15 a.m. 
• The M/V Sankaty will then run one round-trip between Nantucket and Hyannis, then the scheduled 6:45 p.m. departure from Nantucket to Hyannis will instead depart Nantucket at 8 p.m. and return to Woods Hole.
• The above schedule will continue until at least Wednesday, August 3, 2022. Decisions on future service will be made when more information is obtained about the timing of the necessary repairs to the M/V Gay Head.

Online reservations are temporarily halted while our Reservation Office works to contact the affected customers and rebook them. Customers with urgent travel needs can call the Reservation Office at (508) 477-8600 for assistance.