Just don't put the goats on at the same time as the cabbages or the wolves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem

I'm really hoping it's something like progressive enhancement, but for ferries. It seems like a similar problem to web development. If you rely on JavaScript of even the most basic features, you risk having everything break, when you make a mistake in a tiny bit of JS somewhere.

There may be limits to what you can do with a modern ferry, but it would be nice that if when everything else fails, it just revert back to being a "dumb ferry". So you'd be able to use it, but only in fair weather, or with more staff, something like that. Then you yank out the broken bit and install a replacement. While knowing very little about ferries, I suspect it's the integration of systems that makes repairs difficult.

I imagine it’s a ferry that doesn’t need to be sent away for repair or a causeway or similar. But the solution to that problem isn’t important to the writer’s point. It’s in the article to exemplify the issues caused by not considering spacial and temporal factors when designing solutions.

My reading of the article suggests that they think the solution is better networking/internet!

I personally would steer the ferry away from killing ten people to save one person, but I’m also reasonably sure I’d be arrested by a rural philosophy professor.

The CBC has a number of articles addressing the situation:

<https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fogo+change+island+ferry+site%3A.c...>

Upshot / TL;DR:

The new ferry, the MV Veteran, was built by a Dutch firm, and at least one set of repairs required it being returned across the Atlantic to Europe for an engine refit. Substitute service had been provided by, variously, a sister ship, the Galatea, the older ferry that Veteran and Galatea replaced, MV Earl W. Winsor, as well as a fourth ship, MV Legionnaire, fixed-wing and heliocoptor aircraft, the latter at standard sea-based ferry rates.

This 2017 article discusses then-current issues as well as a five-year history of troubled reliability:

<https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/mv-vete...>

Maybe a one way ticket off the island :-)