The man at the helm of the company that once ran the Scotia Prince says Nova Scotia taxpayers will likely have to dig deep in order to keep the Nova Star sailing.

Henk Pols said the first year of re-established ferry service between Yarmouth and Maine shows that the current business model is seriously flawed.

"It's a disaster," said the 80-year-old former ferry company president of the Nova Star's inaugural season.

Pols said re-establishing service was never going to be easy, but 59,000 passengers simply doesn't cut it.

Michel Samson, the province's minister of Economic and Rural Development and Tourism, said it has been a challenging year for the Nova Star Ferry but said it has helped tourism. (CBC)

"It's a disaster because at 59,000 people, you can't generate enough revenue to run a vessel and think in terms of paying all your bills. That has been proven now because this company couldn't pay its bills. They couldn't even pay the fuel bills and the personnel costs at the end of the season," he said.

Nova Scotia's Tourism Minister Michel Samson calls it a challenging year but refuses to accept the claim it was a disaster.

"I have a hard time thinking of anyone in Yarmouth or Southwest Nova or the Valley that would say that bringing back the ferry was not a success for their operations," he says.

The province has already covered $26-million in costs to support the Nova Star.

Pols says keeping the business afloat is going to take much more.

"Unless they make very, very substantial changes and unless the government is prepared to invest a very substantial amount of money, I think it is going to be very difficult," said Pols.

The province has hired an accounting firm to go over the books and to provide an estimate of the cost to taxpayers in the coming years.

Samson says the province will then decide what to do next.