Well, I managed to slip away on a hot summer weekend to my island retreat. I came home late on Sunday night, and as I drove past a ferry lineup that extended way outside the terminal, a good five or six blocks back toward Nanaimo from Departure Bay, I was congratulating myself on having the wisdom to have booked a scarce reservation on the last ferry home.

Or was it the last ferry? I have little doubt that the Ferry Corp. added an unscheduled sailing or two in order to avoid a mass riot.

On the supper hour news today, the Vancouver Island channel made the ferry lineups its lead story. Noting that ferries on the Horseshoe Bay/Departure Bay route run about every two hours, the reporter made some pointed comments about lengthy wait times for passengers without reservations at these terminals.

BC Ferry President David Hahn was interviewed in the piece, and he contrasted the wait times on the up-island route to the Victoria/Tsawassen trip, where the ferries run every hour. The result was that travellers on the southern route had a better, "more predictable" travel experience. The reason for this was simply that more ferries were placed on the Victoria run.

"If you have no spare ships," Mr. Hahn said, "I don't see how you can solve the problems at Horseshoe Bay or Departure Bay."

Good point. If only they had a couple of spare ships.

Look. This is getting ridiculous. The guy hand-picked by the provincial government to run its ferry fleet gets on T.V. and admits he could use a couple of extra boats. He had them; the government sold them for peanuts about two years ago. We all know the Fast Cats were a bad idea, but surely we can all acknowledge by now that selling them for a song at a time when the fleet is stretched thin was an utterly idiotic move. Would they have fetched that much less in a few years time, once a couple of more conventional replacements had arrived?

Try asking some guy sitting five blocks outside of Departure Bay at 10:00 on a Sunday night whether he'd rather have his share of $3 million (ie. 75 cents), or a ride home.

I'd like to see a local reporter ask that question. I know I never will.