The Englishtown ferry in Cape Breton is out of service after a cable snapped last Friday in drift ice.

Two large pieces of ice put strain on the cable as crews were manoeuvring the ferry sideways. The force shattered one of the cable winches into three or four pieces and blew a hole through the side of the winch building.

"It just looked like the whole thing had been destroyed. If you threw a hand grenade in there, it wouldn't look any worse," said ferry captain Nelson Edge.

"A piece of the steel must have been thrown against the inside of the building, and it blew the bricks right out through the side of the building."
 
Edge said ferry service could be out for two or three weeks if the boat is damaged.

"If the boat is not damaged, we can probably be back up and running within a week's time because we can put a temporary anchor point inside the building and we can just tension the cable from the other side," he said.

Edge said officials with the Nova Scotia Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal will assess the damage on Tuesday.