Seattle TV reporters tried to tie Washington State Ferries’
current boat shortage to crewing issues during a conference call
with interim director George Capacci. While staffing has been a
problem, as recently as Tuesday, the two are unrelated.
Two boats are in dry dock undergoing scheduled maintenance. The
124-Kitsap is getting a paint job and the 144-car Yakima having
drive motor work. The jobs were planned a long time ago, and won’t
be completed until late September.
WSF schedules more maintenance during winter, when business is
slower, but it can’t all be completed without spreading into
summer. Having two boats in planned maintenance this time of year
is normal, said ferries spokeswoman Marta Coursey.
What wasn’t expected was for two of the system’s largest vessels to
break down. Ferry officials had been keeping an eye on a Wenatchee
stern tube seal while searching for a dry dock. They had to go to
Vancouver, B.C., to find one, and towed the boat there Monday
evening. The very next day, on a trip from Seattle to Bainbridge
Island, the Tacoma lost power. Capacci said Thursday they don’t
know yet what happened, except that it’s an electrical problem, and
he hopes to have a repair plan next week.
“None of our four current challenges are because of lack of crews,”
Capacci said. ” … These are operational issues with the maintenance
of the vessels that have caused these shortages.”
So does the system have enough money to properly maintain the
boats, a reporter asked.
There is a backlog of deferred vessel maintenance, but the Coast
Guard wouldn’t allow the boats to sail if they weren’t safe,
Capacci said.
Capacci and Coursey characterized the situation as “unprecedented,”
and urged riders to sign up for alerts so they could stay informed.
Those were the themes.
The Wenatchee is expected to return Friday afternoon, but ferries
officials didn’t think they could wait that long to restore a
second boat to the Edmonds-Kingston route. They moved the 124-car
Chelan down from the Anacortes-Sidney, B.C. route at noon. That
wasn’t popular with Anacortes Chamber of Commerce director
Stephanie Hamilton, who called this the town’s biggest weekend.
Capacci said officials looked at reservations booked from Canada
and weighed them against 5,500 vehicles the Edmonds-Kingston route
carries every day. And, he added, it’s better to be without the
Chelan Thursday and Friday and get it back for the weekend.
A technicality came up Tuesday when the Walla Walla was providing
single-boat service to Bainbridge. Normally it’s allowed to carry
1,800 passengers, but it was limited to 600 seats at a time they
were needed the most. That’s the number its life rafts can hold,
and by regulation the maximum number of people the ferry can carry
without another boat on the route to help in emergencies.
Capt. John Dwyer, Coast Guard chief of marine inspection in
Seattle, happened to be in the WSF operations center when the
Tacoma stalled and gave permission to load 1,200 people because the
Sealth was nearby on the Bremerton route and could help rescue
riders. The word never got to the boat or terminal, where customers
were quite upset.
“The loop didn’t get completed,” Capacci said. “The communication
apparently didn’t get to the right person at the right time. I’m
very sorry about that.”
Staffing problems on the Fauntleroy-Vashon Island-Southworth route
Tuesday morning were only indirectly tied to boat problems. The
connection was the boat — Evergreen State — being there because of
the breakdowns. It was brought out of retirement to fill in for the
Sealth and keep the route at three boats. But dispatchers couldn’t
find a mate until 10 a.m., so it remained idle for five hours.
Capacci sidestepped the issue Thursday, but spoke generally.
“There’s a high demand for crews in the summer, but I think
we’re meeting those targets of having those crews available,”
he said.
Monthly Archives: July 2014
Bremerton ferry naming decision coming in November
We’ll know come Nov. 19 whether a new Bremerton ferry is called
Illahee, the name you chose.
That’s the day the Washington State Transportation Commission is
scheduled to vote on a recommendation from its ferry committee. The
schedule was announced Wednesday. A press release soliciting names
is forthcoming. We already have ours.
Over the past couple months, you sent in dozens of names. We
whittled them to the top three. In final voting, Illahee (179) more
than doubled Suquamish (87) and Radulescu (84), the state trooper
shot to death during a traffic stop near Gorst in 2012.
Illahee means “land,” “country” or “place where one lives” in the
Chinook language. It’s a pretty community and former Mosquito Fleet
stop just north of Bremerton. A nearby state park also bears the
name.
The new Olympic-class ferry wouldn’t be the first to be named
Illahee. One served the state for 59 years before being retired in
2007 because of rust. It was scrapped in 2009.
Getting back to the schedule, name packets are due to the
“Transportation Commission by Sept. 12. The ferry committee will
check that they comply with guidelines and move them to Washington
State Ferries and the Ferry Advisory Committee Executive Council
for review. The two get a month to gather opinions before chiming
in.
“The key thing is that there is public support for the name and
they’ve actually gone out and talked to people about it,” Reema
Griffith, commission executive director, said of the name
sponsors.
The 12,000 members of the commission’s Ferry Riders Opinion
Group will be able to participate in a poll.
The Transportation Commission ferry committee will digest all the
input the week of Nov. 10 and present its recommendation to the
full body Nov. 19.
Seven names were proposed for two ferries in 2012. The commission
chose Tokitae and Samish. The remaining five could be back in the
running this year. They are Ivar Haglund, Cowlitz, Hoquiam,
Muckleshoot and Sammamish.
All that’s left for us is to solicit backing from local, regional
and state bodies and officials. I’d like to include support from
you, even if it’s only a sentence. It’d be cool to send in a
hundred sentences from those who actually selected the name.
It’s been a couple years since the last names were chosen and I
never wondered why. While the state was determining how to pay for
the third ferry, another boat jumped in front of it at Vigor
shipyards, WSF interim director George Capacci told the commission
Wednesday.
“The challenge is we didn’t build three boats,” he said. “We built
one and we built one and we built one. The shipyard took another
project between the second and third vessels.”
Capacci said the Tokitae’s introduction to service June 30 was
seamless, the smoothest he’s been involved with in 20 years.
Commissioners wanted to know about vehicles scraping going to the
upper car deck.
“I can count them on one hand of the thousands of vehicles we’ve
carried over the last two weeks,” he said. “It is not operationally
limiting, but with the electron microscope under which we operate
constantly, it has drawn some attention.”
Money is coming in fine for the new 144-car ferries. A 25-cent
capital surcharge was added to each ticket to pay for bonds to
build the first two boats. The debt payment is about $5 million per
biennium while the surcharge is generating about $7.8 million, WSF
finance director Jean Baker told the commission. The Legislature
passed some fee increases last session to help pay for the third
boat.
Fare revenue in general has been up. During the 2011-13 biennium,
it was $1.2 million over projections. This biennium is looking to
be $1.5 million more.
Illahee’s the people’s choice for new ferry name
There could be another Illahee in the state’s ferry future.
That was clearly your favorite name for the new boat that’s coming
to Bremerton in a couple years. Now I have to usher the name
through the bureaucracy and get it picked by the state
Transportation Commission.
The first Illahee served the state for 59 years before being
abruptly yanked in 2007 because it was rusting away. It was
scrapped in 2009.
Over the past couple months, you sent in dozens of names. They were
whittled to three most popular — Illahee, Suquamish and Radulescu.
In final voting last week, Illahee received more than half (179),
though Suquamish (87) and Radulescu (84) also showed solid
support.
It might’ve been more fun to crusade for Tony Radulescu, the state
trooper shot to death during a traffic stop near Gorst in 2012.
Many of you realized that would probably be in vain, however. The
guidelines state that names honoring individuals should be avoided,
but will be considered it the person has been dead for at least 20
years and has enduring fame. As beloved as Tony was, he doesn’t
meet those criteria.
Several of you mentioned he deserved to be memorialized, but in a
different way. Tony got more support from you than the votes
indicate.
Radulescu also bucked the guideline that the name be consistent
with existing fleet names. With the imminent retirement of the
Evergreen State, they’ll all be tribal words.
Illahee fits. It means “land,” “country” or “place where one lives”
in the Chinook language.
It’s also a pretty community three miles north of Bremerton
overlooking Port Orchard Passage that was a former Mosquito Fleet
stop. A nearby state park also adopted the name.
The naming process hasn’t officially begun. Washington State
Ferries first has to sent the Transportation Commission a schedule
for when it needs one. Then the commission will formally
solicit names.
It’ll be up to me to build a case. I have to show how Illahee
conforms to the ferry-naming guidelines, provide background, and
get letters of support from local, regional and state bodies and
officials. I’ll be pushing this as the people’s choice, so it would
be great if you want to write up your thoughts and send them to
me.
The proposals first go to the Transportation Commission’s ferry
team, which reviews them for compliance. Eligible ones advance to
the full commission, the ferry advisory committee executive council
and Washington State Ferries for review and input. They’ll be
posted on the Transportation Commission’s website for public
comment. The full commission looks at all the input and the ferry
team recommendation and makes its decision.
