Cruise ship due for Summerside cancels

The mayor of Summerside says he is disappointed and baffled by a cruise company's decision to cancel a planned visit to the city Monday.

The arrival oftheSilversea Cruises' ship, Silver Whisper,had been confirmed for well over a year, but was cancelled this week.

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"The details that have been released indicated that they felt that coming into the harbour was a little more of a challenge than the captain wanted to deal with," Mayor Bill Martinsaid. "I really don't understand that. We have all kinds of shipping that comes into our harbour. I'm a sailor, I know the harbour very well. The channel's very well-marked. All kinds of depth. I really don't understand that rationale."

Martin said many large ships ply the harbour and the terminal is bigger than the one in Charlottetown, which has many cruise ships visit each year.

Shore excursions already planned

"It is disappointing, because it's something that the folks at SRDC [Summerside Regional Development Corporation] and the port authority have worked very hard at over the last several years to try and cultivate that relationship and cultivate that opportunity," he said.

The mayor said the decision not to come was at such short notice that work had already been completed "in terms of scheduling, trips to the various points of interest that are always identified, and activities for passengers while they were ashore, and so on and so forth."

A ship from a different cruise line visited Summerside earlier this year, but the Silver Whisper is considerably larger. The ship, whichcan hold 382 guests, is 186 metres long and weighs 25,635tonnes.

Fit for even bigger ships, SRDC believes

In early 2015, SRDC general managerArnold Croken said the port can handle ships of almost any size.

"The issue with cruise ships is that they can't wait for tide change, they need to sail on their schedule," he said at the time. "So that then has us looking at cruise ships that have about a six and half metre draft. And that puts us up to the size of a cruise ship of about 2,000 passengers."

Croken could not be immediately reached this weekend.

Martin said he'll continue to work to get cruise ships into Summerside.

"We'll need to sit down and take a look at how this happened and why it happened and what we can do going forward to make sure it doesn't happen again," he said.

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