Guide
When the boat doesn't sail
Three of the destinations on this site are reached by boat, and all three wharves have the same thing at them: nothing. No settlement at Farewell, a small community at Pilley’s Island, a road that ends at Burnside. The schedule tells you when a sailing is meant to go. It does not tell you whether it is going, and the province publishes that separately.
So this page is the other half of a ferry plan — where you actually go when the crossing is off. The figures are measured the same way as everything else here, and the pattern is consistent: the fallback is always further than the wharf feels, because you are driving back down a peninsula before you are going anywhere at all.
Where to go, and how to get there
Farewell — for Fogo Island and Change Islands
The busiest of the three and the one with the least at it — no settlement, nothing tagged at the terminal itself. If the crossing goes, Twillingate is the nearest place with beds and food at 67.8 km and about 1h05; Lewisporte is 73.9 km and 1h09; the airport is 86.2 km and 1h21. Note that the first two are further than they feel because you are driving back down the peninsula before going anywhere.
YQX → Fogo Island — 1h 21m, 86.3 km, then a ferry
Pilley's Island — for Long Island
The most exposed position of the three. Springdale is the nearest town of any size at 65.3 km and about an hour, and after that the options get long: Grand Falls-Windsor is 1h44 and Deer Lake airport 2h22. A cancelled evening sailing here is a night somewhere you had not planned on.
YDF → Long Island — 2h 22m, 171 km, then a ferry
Burnside — for St. Brendan's
The best-placed of the three for a fallback: Gander airport is 94.2 km and about 1h18, which is barely longer than the drive out. Everything else is a long way — Lewisporte 2h04, Twillingate 3h00 — so the sensible retreat here is back the way you came.
YQX → St. Brendan's — 1h 19m, 94.3 km, then a ferry
Before you go
These change. We link the people who keep them current rather than copying numbers that go stale here.
Is the boat running today?Check before you drive, not when you arrive
This is the page's whole point. The province publishes live ferry status separately from the schedule, and it is the difference between finding out at home and finding out at a wharf. Check it before you set off, and again before you commit to the last sailing of the day.
Check it now →Road conditionsYear round, matters most November–April
Weather that cancels a sailing is often weather that makes the drive back worse. Check both.
Check it now →MooseYear round, worst between dusk and dawn
A cancelled evening sailing means an unplanned drive in the dark, on exactly the roads where the province says injury risk doubles. This is the compounding risk on this page rather than a separate one.
Check it now →
Questions people actually ask
How often does this actually happen?＋
We do not know, and we are not going to guess. Wind, sea ice and mechanical trouble all cancel these runs, and the province publishes status precisely because it happens. What we can tell you is what it costs when it does, which is the measurable half.
Can I just wait for the next sailing?＋
Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the service. The Fogo run has several sailings a day; Long Island and St. Brendan's have fewer. If the cancellation is weather rather than mechanical it may hold for the day, so the question is not 'when is the next boat' but 'is there another boat today' — and that is on the live status page, not the timetable.
What if I am booked on the island tonight?＋
Ring them from the wharf, not from the queue. All three of these islands have limited accommodation, and so does everywhere you would fall back to — Twillingate and Lewisporte have real capacity but not unlimited, and in July they fill. The earlier you make that call, the better the outcome.
Does this change which crossing I should pick?＋
It should change when you cross rather than whether. Sailing out in the morning and back with time in hand costs you nothing if all goes well and saves the trip if it does not. The trap is the last sailing of the day in either direction, which is where a cancellation has no slack behind it.
What about flying home the next day?＋
That is the case where this matters most, and the answer is to not be on the island the night before a flight. Every ferry page here says the same thing, and it is the single most expensive mistake available on this coast.
Every coordinate and drive time on this page was checked against its source on August 31, 2026.