PORT TOWNSEND — Between 1890 and 1920, before automobiles and highways cut through the landscape, transportation around Puget Sound relied on hundreds of steam-powered boats and paddlewheelers known as the “mosquito fleet” that swarmed across the water, delivering passengers, freight and the mail.
More than a hundred years later, reviving water-based transport has gone electric.
Artemis Technologies gave demonstration tours to local leaders on Saturday in Port Townsend on its 12-passenger hydrofoil that runs on 100 percent battery power rather than diesel.
The company is promoting the vessel as a fast, quiet, environmentally friendly and cost-efficient means of transportation that would be ideal for reopening a network of waterways on the sound and reorienting residents to water travel a la the mosquito fleet.
“Once you start having better service on the water, both in terms of comfort and speed, then you can start to grow demand for ferry service and build the market for water travel,” said David Tyler, Artemis Technologies’ co-founder.
The nearly 40-foot-long EF-12 Escape carries 12 passengers and two crew; it can travel about 52 nautical miles at about 24.5 knots on a one-hour battery charge.
Retractable hydrofoils lift the vessel out of the water, reducing drag and enabling it to cruise about 1 meter above its surface.
A demonstration run from Bremerton and Port Orchard took just over two minutes, he said, faster than Kitsap Transit Foot Ferry’s 10 minutes.
“I can see a water taxi going from Port Townsend to Edmonds or Anacortes,” Port of Port Townsend Executive Director Eron Berg said.
“They would have to get the operating costs down to make it work. It would be great to have it.”
The EF-12 costs about $2.5 million, more than twice the price of a diesel vessel. The most significant cost savings, as is true with electric vehicles, comes from the lower cost of electricity compared to fuel, Tyler said. He said that, depending on the frequency of trips and the number of passengers, the vessel could pay for itself in less than three years.
Similar to EVs, maintenance and repairs on electric vessels tend to be less costly as well, Tyler said.
Leaning into water transport is important to a place like Port Angeles, said Paul Jarkiewicz, executive director of the Port of Angeles, which has been exploring barge shipping to increase its cargo handling capacity.
“Transportation on the North Olympic Peninsula is limited to [U.S. Highway] 101,” Jarkiewicz said. “This would give us flexibility and could make all sorts of important things happen.”
From the outside, the sleek, carbon fiber EF-12 looks like the getaway boat of a Bond villain.
The interior is likewise Bond-villain sophisticated, resembling the first-class cabin of an aircraft, with wide seats, plenty of leg room and an in-arm food tray.
Transitioning to hydrofoiling mode resembles takeoff from a runway and the banked turns it makes further enhance the feeling that passengers are traveling by air — which, in a sense, they are. The water in Admiralty Inlet was smooth on Saturday, but Tyler said the vessel can handle 16-foot waves.
Observers who viewed the vessel as it flew over the water said it created very little wake and made no noise.
In February, Belfast-based Artemis Technologies signed an MOU with Seattle-based Delta Marine to manufacture a vessel that can carry 150 passengers, comparable in capacity King County Water Taxis and some of Kingston Transit’s Fast Ferries. The 81-foot-long EF-24 has a cruising speed of 34 knots and 70 miles on a 60-minute battery charge.
Following the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, all vessels operating domestically between U.S. ports must be built and registered in the United States.
A bill introduced in the state Legislature this spring that sought to encourage passenger-only ferry service by funding their purchase infrastructure improvements died in the Senate Transportation Committee.
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Reporter Paula Hunt can be reached by email at paula.hunt@peninsuladailynews.com.
The all-electric hydrofoil boat, built by Artemis Technologies of Ireland, cruises at 26 knots on Port Townsend Bay on Saturday during a demonstration of its technology. The boat is made of carbon fiber and is whisper quiet, virtually non-polluting and powered by rechargeable batteries. (Steve Mullensky/for Peninsula Daily News)
