'We're trying to keep people safe': Fullers master on ferry delays

A Fullers skipper says passenger ferry crews will not risk the safety of those aboard to stick to a timetable, after a week of delays blamed on cruise ship berthings.

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff called Ports of Auckland, Transport, Waiheke Community Board members and Fullers - who operate the ferries - into a meeting on Wednesday to ask why cancellations and delays were happening.

The harbourmaster will now convene a group of critical parties to work through a number of options, Goff said.

Goff told RNZ he found it frustrating that Fullers was stating the cancellations were caused by cruise liner berthings and that it wasn't safe to come in, but the harbourmaster had said there weren't grounds for cancellations.

After a week of ferry delays and three cancelled Auckland sailings on Tuesday morning - blamed on two docking cruise ships - a Fullers master, who the Herald has agreed not to name, said crews were just trying to keep people safe.

"As masters, we will not risk those for which we are responsible for. This is also one of Fullers' core values," he said.

"We spend all day analysing and assessing risk, and the potential to have a serious incident in this situation is a real one."

Auckland Transport has said the cruise ships were not to blame for the disruption on Tuesday.

It said the harbour master found the ships' impact on other vessels was negligible.

The Queen Elizabeth berthed in Auckland this morning, as seen from the deck of Fullers' close-brushing ferry from Hobsonville Point. Photo / Chris Keall

However, the Fullers master released a video showing the Seaborne Encore, a luxury cruise ship, arriving at Auckland Harbour this week.

With only gentle wind in the area, the pilot releases the tugs early and uses the ship's own propulsion thrusts, creating a wash that wouldn't be safe for a ferry to manoeuvre through, he said.

"Anyone that drives a boat through Westhaven, which is a large part of Auckland, knows that if you go through anybody's wash, let alone a 10,000 horsepower cruise ship, that there's going to be problems."

"We're so light, compared to them [the cruise ship], that we'd just lose total control of the vessel and at best, bump into something, at worst, crash into something and send people down the stairs.

"Every commercial skipper will tell you that you don't go through the water of a cruise ship."

A Harbourmaster vessel (left) tries to wrangle a Fullers ferry into the gap between the Seabourn Encore and Pier 4 on Tuesday. Photo / Chris Keall

"Everyone needs to come to a resolution, because one thing that's not going to change, is that the masters are never going to jeopardise the vessel or the people on board for a timetable."

Fullers, the harbourmaster and Auckland Transport should work cohesively to resolve the issue, he said.

"The passengers deserve to get where they want to go, the passengers and the crew deserve to get there safely, the people on the Ports of Auckland deserve to run the ships and the cruise ship pilots deserve not to have to worry about us little honey bees floating about the bottom of their ship, and they've got massive ships to take care of."