Marine Atlantic looks forward to negotiations on replacement of the Leif Ericson

    Wednesday, 7 January 2026 12:02

    By Tonya Organ

    Yesterday, Marine Atlantic announced a five year lease for a vessel to address capacity issues that is due to start on the Gulf run this fall.

    Marine Atlantic is looking forward to negotiations with the feds on the replacement of its aging vessel, the Leif Ericson. Darrell Mercer is with Corporate Communications and yesterday, spoke about the introduction of a newly leased  vessel to start on the Gulf run this fall. He says this five year lease with Stena is to address capacity issues and while the Leif Ericson has served them well, it doesn’t have the same passenger perspective. Mercer says the extra capacity was needed last summer as many people trying to make travel plans could not since they were  overbooked. 

    He says this newly leased vessel can transport both passenger and commercial traffic and can also be used on the Argentia ferry run. The vessel will be renamed and was recently operated as a Corsica ferry service in Europe. 

     

     

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