YAKIMA

CLASS: Super

BUILT/REBUILT:  1967/2000 National Steel & Shipbuilding Co., San Diego/Todd Shipyard, Seattle

OFFICIAL NUMBER: 5118223  CALL SIGN: WY2988 (1967) WCD7863 (2018)

L/B/D: 382 x 73 x 19 GROSS/NET TONS: 2705/1115 PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 2000/144

PROPULSION: 4 EMD 645 Diesel Electric, 8000 HP SPEED: 16 knots

NAME TRANSLATION: “To become peopled; black bears; people of the narrow river.” A city, county and river are also named after the English spelling of the tribe.

FINAL DISPOSITION:  In service, 2024.

HISTORY

The Yakima spent her first years at Bremerton before being moved up to the Kingston-Edmonds route.  She was paired on the route for a number of years with the Issaquah Class ferry Chelan. As more and more commuters from the north end of Kitsap County took to the Kingston-Edmonds route and bus and train connections in Edmonds to take them down to Seattle, the Yakima was shifted northward after being replaced by the Walla Walla.

Since 1999 she has called the San Juan Islands home, where her freight capacity and low wake have made her, like the other Super Class ferries, ideal for working the narrow passages between the islands.

When sent in for her mid-life upgrade in 1999, the Yakima emerged with some flourishes not in the others of her class—different designs in her tile, including an attractive compass rose in the galley.  The use of darker materials throughout made the ferry’s new interior more striking than that of her sister Kaleetan.

Unfortunately, when she was painted it seems that it didn’t quite adhere as it should have.  Almost at once it began to bubble and peel, and before long the exterior of the Yakima was a mess.  Large portions of paint were peeling in the shelter decks, car deck and other areas of the vessel, and it wasn’t long before the outside began to look every bit as bad.  It was nearly a contest to see which could look worse—the Hyak or the Yakima.

For the 2010-2011 maintenance season the Yakima finally got some yard time and was fully painted.

While the paint has been renewed, mechanically the Yakima and Kaleetan are still using fifty-plus-year-old drive motors which have been obsolete for nearly three decades.  The reliability of the entire class has been slipping in recent years as mechanical problems have begun to surface with more regularity (culminating in the retirement of the Hyak in 2019 and Elwha in 2020).  The Yakima spent the summer of 2014 out of service having the drive motor rebuilt.  She was in service for only a few weeks when more troubles arose and she spent much of the fall schedule in the yard as well. The summer of 2017 saw her sidelined with generator problems for weeks.

In late July 2018 the Yakima went in the yard to replace both propellers, one which was damaged in the spring of 2018 resulting in the Yakima running at half speed with a horrible vibration for months.  The entire 5-blade propeller program has been an abject failure for WSF—which they would have known had they gone back and looked at newspaper articles from the 1980s—the last time they tried 5-blade propellers.

It seems the only 5-blade prop that actually reduced vibration for any of the WSF fleet was the one installed on the Kalakala!