The Steamship Authority this week said it is prepared for general summer vehicle reservations to open for Martha’s Vineyard after smooth sailing Thursday on Nantucket’s opening day. 

The ferry line booked about 7,800 transactions on the Nantucket route Thursday, overcoming any technical issues that plagued early Islander summer reservations in January and caused the authority to delay the Vineyard opening by two weeks. 

Thousands of people logged into a virtual waiting room Thursday morning to score trips to and from Hyannis and the neighboring Island. The average wait time peaked at about two hours and 20 minutes shortly before 10:30 a.m., but there were no reports of glitches or crashes. 

Now the ferry line will turn its attention to the Vineyard, which will have its opening day on Feb. 14, beginning at 8 a.m.. 

“Based on the system’s performance during Nantucket’s general opening, I feel confident in proceeding with the scheduled opening for Martha’s Vineyard reservations,” Steamship general manager Robert Davis said in a statement. “I’m thankful to our IT staff and our external vendors for their diligence in ensuring today’s reservation opening for Nantucket was a success. Although delaying the general openings was unfortunate, we ultimately were able to provide a better experience for our customers.”

The Steamship Authority’s reservation system has had problems in the past and it struggled when the ferry line opened up summer reservations to Islanders in January. An investigation later found problems due to an underperforming cloud-based server, as well as communications failures of on-premise web servers. 

Changes made to the servers and testing indicated the system would be able to handle the crush of customers. 

The Steamship Authority closely monitored Thursday’s opening day for Nantucket and managed the number of customers on the website at any given time by setting up the virtual waiting room. There, customers could see their place in line, eliminating the need for customers to continually refresh their web browsers. 

The Steamship Authority’s information technology staff will continue to work with outside vendors to fine-tune the process ahead of the Vineyard’s opening, which is scheduled at 8 a.m.