PORT TOWNSEND – The North Olympic Peninsula is without a car ferry between Port Townsend and Keystone on Whidbey Island through January after state Secretary of Transportation Paul Hammond suddenly ordered all Steel Electric ferries pulled from service late Tuesday afternoon.
While the timing before Thanksgiving couldn’t be worse, there are concerns about corrosion in the aging vessels’ hulls that must be examined, Hammond said.
One of the four 80-year-old Steel Electrics, the Klickitat, the ferry running between Port Townsend and Keystone, was removed from the route at the end of Tuesday.
Passenger-only ferry service, with bus service at both the Port Townsend and Keystone terminals, hopefully will be arranged by Friday, officials said.
Ferry officials plan to operate the high-speed passenger ferry Snohomish between Port Townsend and Keystone. The passenger ferry will maintain the Klickitat’s current schedule.
In addition, the Kingston-Edmonds ferry will have three additional runs added to its schedule through Sunday.
There will be no car-passenger ferry service for Port Townsend-Keystone “until further notice,” probably at least until the end of January, Hammond said.
The four 1927-vintage Steel Electrics – Klickitat, Quinault, Nisqually and Illahee, the only ferries small enough and agile enough to maneuver in and out of the terminal at Keystone – have been springing hull leaks for years and suffer from corrosion problems.
They also don’t meet federal safety requirements in effect for other ferries since the mid-1950s.
The Coast Guard’s concerns about the ferries have been the subject of numerous recent news stories.
