After vowing that Tuesday’s online opening for auto reservations for the Martha’s Vineyard route would run more smoothly than the chaotic Nantucket opening day, the results did not bear out the promise.
Next Tuesday will be different. That was the pledge from the Steamship Authority this week after a series of website problems marred the opening day for online summer reservations on the Nantucket route.
Thousands of people logged onto the Steamship Authority website hours before dawn Tuesday, breaking records on the opening day of summer ferry reservations.
The Steamship Authority was hit with a debilitating ransomware attack early Wednesday that reverberated across operations, crashing the website, halting vehicle reservations and crippling internal communication systems.
Edgartown went to the sea and the cloud on Monday, launching a new website and setting dates for the commercial oyster season at its selectmen’s meeting.
The Vineyard Gazette’s website, vineyardgazette.com, won a national EPPY award on Tuesday for excellence in digital media. The site was named best newspaper site under 1 million unique monthly visitors.
Groundhog Day came early for Steamship Authority customers seeking summer reservations for automobiles. The boat line website crashed at 5 a.m. Tuesday.
An unexplained surge of traffic to Vineyard Gazette websites Tuesday caused vineyardgazette.com to go down briefly just after noon and remain slow for several hours.