APT James to return to sea bridge Jan 9

The in­ter-is­land fer­ry APT James is now ex­pect­ed to re­turn to ser­vice on Jan­u­ary 9, 2026, lat­er than the pre­vi­ous­ly in­di­cat­ed Jan­u­ary 3.

The ves­sel was tak­en out of ser­vice on No­vem­ber 20, 2025, for its manda­to­ry five-year dry dock­ing, which in­clud­ed a com­pre­hen­sive “Spe­cial Sur­vey” to en­sure its safe­ty, op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy, reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, and struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty. The works were car­ried out on the AMT Go­liath, the na­tion’s first se­mi-sub­mersible float­ing dock, and have been suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed.

NID­CO con­firmed that all re­lat­ed fees have been paid and that post-dock­ing pro­ce­dures — in­clud­ing the load­ing of life rafts, sea tri­als, and clean­ing — are now com­plete. Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said the re­turn of the fer­ry marks a key step in main­tain­ing the safe­ty and re­li­a­bil­i­ty of the in­ter-is­land sea bridge.

NID­CO thanked the pub­lic for its pa­tience dur­ing the dry-dock­ing pe­ri­od and re­it­er­at­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to en­sur­ing con­tin­ued safe and ef­fi­cient fer­ry op­er­a­tions.