An investigation has found that tampering is what led a party boat carrying 150 North Vancouver students to run aground on Oct. 23.<\/p>\n
Passengers of the Pride of Vancouver catamaran vessel were left stranded for hours after the boat ran aground.<\/p>\n
According to student body president Cady Nelson-Quine, it took until midnight for the Sutherland Secondary School students to be fully evacuated. There were no injuries.<\/p>\n
Vanessa Garrett with Spirit Cruises, the company operating the vessel, told CBC News that the protective cage had been removed and the the emergency engine shut-off had been activated, causing the engine to stop.<\/p>\n
Garrett said after the engine stopped, a strong current pushed the vessel off course, causing the starboard propeller to hit a sand bar. It then became stuck on the Maplewood mudflats near the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge.<\/p>\n
“We do not know exactly who tampered with it, what we do know is it was someone aboard since the protective cage covering the shut-off had to be removed to pull the shut-off,” said Garrett.<\/p>\n
She said it was not a mechanical failure, as the engine equipment was fully rebuilt in April 2026 when the vehicle went through a full refit at dry dock.<\/p>\n
“We are very disappointed, as we have a great deal of respect for all of our passengers and crew, and something so preventable is not something we ever thought we would have to deal with,” said Garrett.<\/p>\n
CBC News reached out to the North Vancouver School District for this story, but was told that the boat trip wasn’t a school-organized or sanctioned event and was organized by a group of parents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An investigation has found that tampering is what led a party boat carrying 150 North Vancouver students to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-951853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}