Old ferries taken out of service for checks

SEATTLE – Washington State Ferries is pulling its four 80-year-old Steel Electric class vessels out of service in order to examine the hulls of the Quinault, Klickitat, Illahee and Nisqually.

As of Tuesday, the Klickitat and the Illahee were the only ones of the four vessels operating. They were being taken out of service as they completed their last runs of the day, state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond said.

Another ferry will replace the Illahee on the San Juan Islands inter-island route, but no car-carrying vessel will replace the Klickitat on the Port Townsend-Keystone crossing.

The decision means the Port Townsend-Keystone car ferry route will be closed beginning today until further notice.

The Quinault has been found to have significant hull pitting along the keel and that likely is a problem with all four, Hammond said in a statement.

The seaworthiness of the ferries was most recently called into question last weekend when the Herald of Everett reported that the ferry system provided an incomplete picture of the vessels’ problems when it briefed state lawmakers last month about detailed inspections of the hulls.

Ferry officials told the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee in a report that the Steel Electric boats were “generally considered to be in good condition.”

But they now acknowledge finding two dozen more cracks in the vessels than lawmakers were told about. Corrosion of hull plates also was more widespread than reported.

The four ferries predominantly serve the Port Townsend-Keystone and San Juan Islands inter-island routes. They are the only ferries in the Washington state system capable of operating in Keystone’s narrow and shallow harbor on Whidbey Island.

“We have kept up with the repairs on these vessels, but we are at a turning point that requires emergency action,” Hammond said Tuesday.

“I realize the timing of this couldn’t be worse,” she added. “It is Thanksgiving weekend. We are doing everything we can to make this easier on the traveling public and the communities we serve.”

To help make up for loss of the Port Townsend-Keystone car service, a third car ferry will be added to the Edmonds-Kingston route today through Sunday to handle holiday traffic.

A high-speed passenger-only ferry, the Snohomish, also will run between Port Townsend and Keystone, but that might not be available until Friday, the ferry system said.

The state had planned to put its two mothballed passenger ferries, the Snohomish and the Chinook, on the online auction site eBay at the end of the month. The vessels haven’t operated since 2003. The Legislature earlier decided to get out of the foot-ferry business.

“I have asked the ferry system to work with local shipyards to fast-track a solution to get car ferry service back on this route as quickly as possible,” Hammond said.

“Our first priority is to assess the full range of hull pitting in each vessel and determine the extent and the cost of needed repairs. Depending on what is found, the next step will be repair or retirement of the Steel Electrics.”

She did not offer an estimate on how long repairs might take.

Washington runs the nation’s largest ferry system, carrying 24 million passengers and 11 million vehicles a year. In addition to troubles with some of the older vessels, the system has faced chronic money problems and critical state audits.

A consultant hired to inspect the Steel Electric ferries submitted reports identifying 184 fractures in the four vessels’ hulls, documents show. Ferry officials told lawmakers about 160 of those problems. They all documented places where the metal in the hulls’ plating or supporting frame had weakened or been damaged over time.

The 24 additional fractures were omitted from the ferry system’s report to lawmakers because they were discovered using additional inspection measures that at the time had been performed on only the Illahee, said Dave Nye, a ferry system preservation engineer.

The report to lawmakers also didn’t hint that ferry officials for weeks believed hull inspections had identified 31 problems serious enough that the Steel Electrics could have been forced out of service until repaired to the Coast Guard’s satisfaction, the Herald reported.

The ferry system has paid upward of $4 million this year on repairs to the Steel Electrics. Tuesday’s announcement comes less than a month after it was announced that the ferry system’s chief, Mike Anderson, will be retiring by the end of the year.