She said it was important to get the children back on time for their classes, but two parent helpers had to stay behind and reschedule the group\u2019s two vehicles to alternative sailings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe managed to get some Jetstar flights for our kids to get home, [but] it has probably added around about $3000 to our total costs,\u201d Feeberg said.<\/p>\n
Feeberg said she was disappointed the children had to spend extra money from fundraising that could have been put towards the rowers\u2019 team activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been really nice for that to go into equipment for the kids and travel to other regattas [and] not be spending that on last minute travel hiccups,\u201d Feeberg said.<\/p>\n
She said what should have been a fun and social ending to the regatta was tainted by the stress of having to find out what was happening and book alternative travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been really, really hard to get information. We received a text just as we were turning up for one of the races. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou had to phone to try and get on to other boats \u2013 you couldn\u2019t get through on the phones \u2013 my husband sent an email as well and we were just left scrambling to look at other arrangements to get our kids back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been really nice to know what was happening and why,\u201d Feeberg said.<\/p>\n
She said the group had taken advantage of special fares for the event and so had chosen to use Bluebridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not very good business is it? If you give a whole lot of people a discount to snaffle up the market and then don\u2019t deliver. So it is disappointing,\u201d Feeberg said.<\/p>\n
Feeberg said she had never thought of taking out travel insurance for domestic travel, but after experiencing the added strain the situation had put on to the group\u2019s time away, she would be looking into it for future trips.<\/p>\n
Another traveller \u2013 who did not want to be named \u2013 said the ferry\u2019s failure had added about $2100 to their family of three\u2019s costs for returning home after a short holiday and wedding in Nelson.<\/p>\n
The traveller said they were texted at 3am last Monday that their scheduled 2pm sailing would not go ahead.<\/p>\n
They said the nearest passage available \u2013 on either ferry service \u2013 would have been 11 days later, so the family had to arrange homeward flights at a cost of $1500.<\/p>\n
One family member then had to fly back at the end of last week to pick up their car, luggage and the family dog \u2013 which they had been forced to leave with relatives \u2013 and catch an Interislander sailing, which added another $600 to their bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand that issues arise with machinery but the lack of support to a [situation] that has been generated by their vessels along with no compensation on extra costs added to travellers in trying to return home … is very frustrating,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
The traveller said they had another booking in place for the end of the week and hoped the Connemara would be up and running by that point.<\/p>\n
\u2013 RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said it was important to get the children back on time for their classes, but two parent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,3292,47117,101,111,43,139,69,41140,38404,12507,3767],"class_list":["post-354977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-cancellations","tag-ferry","tag-left","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-regatta","tag-rowing","tag-stranded","tag-students"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}