Ameland car ferry passengers trapped for hours on ship with technical issues

A broken car bridge left about a hundred passengers stuck on the ferry from Ameland to Holwert on Monday evening. The ferry eventually sailed back to Ameland with the trapped passengers and their cars still on board. They were sheltered on the Wadden island in the hope that they could return to the mainland and get off there on Tuesday morning, NOS reports.

The ferry arrived in Holwert at around 7:50 p.m. on Monday, and the operators discovered they couldn’t lower the bridge to unload the cars, Ger van Langen, director of the shipping company Wagenborg told NOS. The ferry was crowded because it was the end of the Pentecost long weekend. “The boat was full, so there were about 65 cars that were stuck. It is about a hundred affected people, which makes it very complicated.”

At around 00:30 a.m., the stuck passengers were informed that the ferry was returning to Ameland. Some travelers arranged their own transport and a place to sleep on the mainland and left their car keys with the ferry operators, who promised to park the cars in Holwert when the bridge could be lowered.

The rest of the passengers returned to Almeland with their cars, where various holiday parks accommodated them. Sonja Evers, the owner of Het Ballumer Hof vacation park, took in some stranded travelers. “We received this request from someone at the shipping company,” she told the broadcaster. “The houses were just empty again, so we could give four young families a place. They had crying children with them who were dead tired. Very sad.”

According to a spokesperson for the public works department, Rijkswaterstaat Noord-Nederland, the problem with the ferry was a broken winch cable, which raises and lowers the bridge. Whether the broken ferry will affect Tuesday’s timetable wasn’t immediately clear.

Another ferry from Ameland to Holwert had to turn around on Monday because there is only room for one ferry in the Holwert harbor at a time.