_{^{The Tacoma was only 5 years old when this photo was taken. Now at 29 years of age, in most places she’d be considered at the end of her service life. The legislature in their “wisdom” has saddled WSF with a completely impractical 60 year life cycle for their vessels.}}

And we’re off…

…to a rip-roaring start, with three major vessels knocked off line to greet the New Year. First, the Walla Walla sheered off a propeller blade (which, for reasons I am not entirely sure of unless they pulled the prop from another boat, they kept referring to as a ’57-year old propeller.’ First off, that’s three years older than the boat and implies the the original props, or something like it were still on the boat…which is absolutely not the case. Weird.)

Actually, that may have been second. I believe that the Kittitas (46 years old), of late on the Vashon Island run, broke down first. That took Vashon down to two boats. Then went the Wally, (52 years old) taking the Bremerton run down to one boat, and lastly, out went the Tacoma (29 years old), which knocked the Bainbridge run down to one boat for a time.

Complicating the issue is that the Chelan, Chetzemoka, Samish, and Suquamish were already out of service for planned maintenance/ annual Coast Guard certification. These yard times can’t usually be canceled or moved around willy-nilly due to shipyard time being at a premium–particularly if the work requires drydocking.

This is a perfect storm of prolonged neglect by lawmakers, and yes, I hate to say it, the electrification program. While I am all for that, the truth is we should have built three more efficient diesels like the Suquamish while we had the chance. Instead, that program was scuttled in favor of electrification of the new boats, which required lengthy design modifications (because nothing the size of the ferries proposed by WSF has been built by anyone in the United States, ever) and set the building program back a decade or more. And as I have said time and time again, this state moves at a glacial pace to get new boats built–it always takes a DECADE of designing, planning, and bidding out a contract before the first new ferry ever touches the water. This is simply not sustainable.

And it isn’t going to get any better. The first new boat is four years away, assuming it gets built, something I’m high skeptical of at this point. The second and third are each a year beyond that. And that still nets us with a net gain of 0 boats.

Governor Ferguson has outlined a new spending program for three more boats beyond the first three and this is something the legislature must pass. We’re beyond the failure point for the whole system now, and the ferries aren’t getting any younger; some of the “new” ferries have already passed ten years in service. It won’t be too long before nearly half the ferry fleet is sporting gold bands on their funnels.

And what do these things have in common?

If you guessed they made their debut in 1959, you got it right. And how many Studebaker Larks do you see in the roads these days? But I can guarantee you that the Tillikum ferried her share of new ones across the Sound.

It’s been a stormy fall/winter…

It’s been a very wet, very stormy winter. If we’re not getting hit with a week’s worth of atmospheric rivers (which raised the Skagit River to the highest I’ve ever seen it) we’re getting feet dumped into the mountains–which isn’t a bad thing, really. We need the snow pack.

However, along with all this very active weather has come some very high winds. In fact, so fierce that B.C. Ferries had to cancel some 75 sailings. (Why this story says ‘5800’ is beyond me–I suspect they meant passengers rather than sailings.)

Unlike WSF, B.C. Ferries has a threshold limit on sailing in high winds–it gets too gusty, they don’t sail. This makes complete sense given the length of the sailings to Vancouver Island. Around here, the crossings, save for the San Juan Islands are relatively short and and generally in protected areas…which isn’t to say it can’t get downright harrowing out there on Puget Sound. Our ferries have rightly canceled for wind. I clearly remember a trip cross from Bremerton to Seattle where the the Sealth was rolling so much that the chairs (this was before her interior refurbishment) started sliding down the deck–with us sitting in them. We got to Seattle and they shut down the runs for a while until the wind backed off.

Port Townsend-Keystone is the notable exception to this. It is often canceled because of wind, due not only to the size of the boat battling the waves but trying to get into tiny Keystone Harbor in a full gale is no easy task. There’s no room for error and it is far to easy to send up on the beach.

Here’s hoping the rest of winter is a little more sedate!

Some good news for the Alaska Marine Highway…

The Kennicott, after having complete some extensive repairs/preservation work at the Everett Shipyard, returned to service just in time for Christmas.

With the Kennicott back on the water, this will allow the Columbia to go in for its annual overhaul.

Speaking of which…

The old stalwart of the Black Ball Line, the M/V Coho, which was also in service when Eisenhower was president and the Edsel was in its second year of its three-year run, is having it annual maintenance. She left service on January 5th 2026 and will resume service to Victoria on February 19th.

Meanwhile, on the other coast…

The Steamship Authority, which runs ferries to Martha’s Vineyard and where the ferry we loved to hate ended up (that’d be the Kulshan) has run into some troubles. A scathing report issued by the MA Inspector General harshly criticized the agency for wasting taxpayer money on a “bungled” website overhaul. And it seems said overhaul of the website despite having gotten underway back in 2022 still isn’t done.

99 years young!

2026 marks the 99th birthday of the M/V Santa Rosa, which we know up here as the M/V Enetai. She’s still moored at Pier 3 in San Francisco and is still the headquarters for Hornblower Yachts.

The last surviving member of the Steel Electric class, she will turn 100 in June 2027.