When was this snipped of an editorial written? 2008? 1997? No, it’s yellowed newsprint, so it has to be a bit older than that.

Would you believe….

1965.

Yep, that’s right. Noted in an editorial in a Port Angeles newspaper fifty-eight years ago.

Oh, incidentally, what’s the fleet of today? Why, 21 vessels! The newest vessel? Suquamish, which is just about six years old. And the oldest? The Tillikum, at 64. Only 9 of the 21 ferries currently in service are considered to be in good shape.

You’d think we’d have learned this lesson by now.

Meanwhile we wait…and wait…and wait… for the first steel to be cut for a new ferry. So far, nothing is happening.

New boat by 2027? Please, pull the other one, it’s got bells on it.

Meanwhile, Labor Day is upon us again.

The traditional end of summer is expected to be the busiest for WSF in four years.

Travel early, travel late, try to avoid the rush, and good luck!

…and over at Bainbridge

An overhead walkway wasn’t even a consideration at Bainbridge when the new terminal was being built in 1950, but the one that has been there for decades and is built on a timber pilings is finally coming down.

WSF is in the final phase of the project, which will close the Bainbridge route to all vehicle traffic–including bikes and motorcycles–September 7th through the 13th. To help mitigate the traffic, a third boat is being added to Edmonds run.

The new structure, aside from taking creosote timbers out of Puget Sound, the new walkway is seismically resistant and made of materials not polluting the water.

Any photo or footage will do…

From that same article outlining the fleet of 1965. Even then news outlets didn’t bother using contemporary photos of the ferries–this photo dates from the Klahanie’s days with the Puget Sound Navigation Company, which had been gone for fourteen years by that time, and aside from a livery change, the the vessel’s big windows had been covered with plywood with portholes cut into them. (Although later in her career, those plywood portholes would start to come off, with at times the Klahanie sailing with one side with portholes and one side without.

This still goes on today. Tune in to any news story about ferry traffic and you’re bound to see a parade of retired vessels, long out of service. Even the Steel Electrics will make an appearance from beyond the grave once in a while.

Speaking of bids…

Seems that bidding for contracts haven’t been going well for Alaska, either. However, it now looks like the state is ready to put out a big for a replacement for the Tustumena.

Projected cost? $325 million.

Too much talk of citrus fruit…

The Coastal Renaissance has experienced issues with her drive motors and will be out until sometime in mid-October. This has resulted in a plethora of canceled sailings.

I have watched with interested as the sixteen-year-old ferry has been tried to be cast as a lemon by some in the press. To my knowledge, there haven’t been a huge number of issues with the class aside from some teething issues when they were new–which is pretty typical as a vessel is broken in. Admittedly, I haven’t been paying to close of attention to them, but the fact that none in the class pop up too often in a search on Google News would indicate to me that they’re pretty far from being lemons.

People tend to forget just how hard ferries work. WSF vessels are working seven days a week, on average 45 weeks a year, often at twenty hours of service every day. (A little bit of a generalization, it does depend on what route, etc, but these boats are running ALL THE TIME.) And, don’t forget, each landing is, as one captain put it a long time ago, basically a controlled crash. B.C. Ferries work just as hard, with much longer routes. At 16 years of age, I don’t think it’s too unexpected to have some issues cropping up given the amount of hours all these ferries log.

So… perhaps don’t bandy the “lemon” word around so easily.

Sand! Sand is the enemy!

Actually, it’s no laughing matter. In the old Kulshan’s stomping grounds, the sandy bottom of Hyannis Harbor is causing difficulties for the fleet. The Nantucket, for instance, had to be pulled from service when sand blasted through a rubber seal protecting the ferry’s propeller shaft.

There’s a reason they use sand under pressure to blast paint and rust off a hull–we’ve all seen sand under a microscope and know how sharp those little bits of rock are.

There are calls for the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the harbor, which was last done in 2013.

Strike Averted!

And this just in, Victoria Clipper workers will not be going on strike this Labor Day weekend.

A tentative agreement was reached with workers on Thursday, 31 August.

See ya later, summer…