PORT TOWNSEND – Traffic was snarled with 90-minute to three-hour waits for boarding the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry when the MV Illahee had a steering problem Sunday.
But today looks like smoother sailing.
The ferry was taken to Dakota Creek Industries shipyard in Anacortes, where the 80-year-old vessel had recently undergone repair.
“In the first voyage, it had what looked a small radial crack in the stern tube,” said Marta Coursey, director of communications for Washington State Ferries.
The Illahee was on the run on a temporary basis.
The MV Quinault is out of service at the shipyard, and the MV Nisqually was scheduled to return to duty this morning.
The route, operating with the MV Klickitat pulling all crossings, left voyagers waiting up to three hours on what is normally a 45-minute wait, Coursey said.
Drivers were advised to take an alternate route through the Kingston-Edmonds ferry, Coursey said.
Last year, 767,000 passengers traveled on that route.
Recent increased scrutiny of the 80-year-old Klickitat, Quinault, Illahee and Nisqually, which carry people between Port Townsend and Keystone Harbor on Whidbey Island, and in the San Juan Islands, has Washington State Ferries speeding up a study of options for replacing the vessels, Paula Hammond, the state’s interim transportation secretary, said last week.
The ferries, the last of a type called Steel Electrics, have been springing leaks for years and suffer from corrosion problems. Further, none of them meets federal safety requirements in effect since the mid-1950s, according to WSF.
The state is now negotiating with shipbuilders to construct four 144-car ferries, more than twice the size of the old ones.
Ferry officials are hopeful the new boats will allow them to retire two Steel Electrics sometime after 2009.
Until it finds alternatives, WSF will have to keep at least some of the aging ferries operating on the run between Keystone and Port Townsend, Hammond said.
