Editorial: Refit two retired ferries during wait for new boats

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, March 10, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

With Washington State Ferries not scheduled to receive the first of three new hybrid-electric ferries from a Florida shipyard until 2030 to 2032, passengers and ferry-served communities might wonder when they’ll next be left waiting at the dock if a breakdown or maintenance forces cancelled sailings.

Currently the state ferry system has no ferry available to be plugged into a route to take up the slack of an out-of-service boat. And a proposal earlier this year by Gov. Bob Ferguson to borrow $1 billion to purchase three more ferries in addition to the three on order didn’t draw much interest from the Legislature’s transportation leaders. But even those ferries wouldn’t have entered service earlier than the boats coming from Florida.

That leaves WSF, the largest marine-highway system in the U.S., with 21 active vessels with an average age of 35 years, five of which have more than 50 years of service under their keels.

But necessity may have berthed at least two proposals that could take some of the strain off an all-hands-on-deck moment for state ferries.

Friday, the Legislature passed a bill that would allow counties, ports, transit systems and others to establish passenger ferry transit districts, resurrecting in spirit the Mosquito Fleet of steamboats that connected Salish Sea communities from the 1880s to 1920s and were a precursor to the state ferry system.

The bill, which passed the Senate and is now waiting for the governor’s signature, lost an earlier provision for a state-funded grant program, so the new passenger ferry districts will be largely on their own in terms of start-up funds. And other provisions provide only a short window to get passenger service on the water. Among the requirements are that new vessels built for the transit systems after Dec. 31, 2027, be built in Washington and be zero-emission vessels. Another makes the districts ineligible for state funding after Jan. 1, 2028.

Still, lifting the state’s monopoly on ferry service — at least for foot passenger service — opens an opportunity for existing routes and perhaps new routes, including additional inter-island service in the San Juan Islands, restarting a dormant connection to Sidney, B.C., and perhaps, Vancouver, B.C., as well as more frequent service between Everett and Clinton, among other possible routes.

Another proposal could bring back two familiar names to the state ferry system: Hyak and Klahowya.

With the state running out of space at its maintenance yard at Eagle Harbor on Bainbridge Island, it has looked for takers of two ferries retired in recent years. The Klahowya, an 87-vehicle Evergreen Class-ferry built in 1958, was mothballed in 2017, followed two years later by the 144-vehicle Super Class Hyak, built in 1966. Each ferry has served as a parts storehouse as other vessels needed replacement equipment; although the Hyak’s horn now bellows after each Seattle Kraken goal at Climate Pledge Arena.

In December the state Department of Transportation requested proposals from those interested in taking the vessels off their hands, either for repurposing, refurbishing or scrap. Most recently, the state sold the Elwah, one of the three sister ships of the Hyak, to Everett Ship Repair for $100,000, set for use as floating office and storage space at its yard south of Naval Station Everett.

The state earlier had a taker for both boats, again at $100,000 each, until the prospective buyer was unable to tow the vessels to Ecuador as planned.

Now both boats are back on the block, and one state marine business, Stabbert Maritime — with yards in Ballard and Anacortes — thinks the boats can be refurbished to add another 20 to 30 years of service life and leased to Washington State Ferries, at least until the first of the new ferries are on duty.

“I think this could be a success story for Washington state’s ship repair yards and the best way to go forward,” said Charlie Costanzo, founder of Blakely Rock Strategies, a partner in the Stabbert proposal. “From an economic standpoint, there’s a success story there that we’re bringing work back to Washington, and there’s a success story in terms of preserving the value of the asset for the state.”

Stabbert is equipped for the work, said Bryan Nichols, a vice president with the ship refurbishing and repair business.

“We already take older vessels, make sure — if the steel’s good — we see a market for it, we then refurbish them and reintroduce them into new markets,” he said.

While a closer evaluation of both boat’s structural integrity would follow an agreement between the state and Stabbert, an initial look at both boats found them to be good candidates for refurbishment, Nichols said. And that work could be completed in 18 to 24 months, putting them on routes perhaps as much as four years sooner than the new ferries are expected to arrive.

The same may be possible for other of the system’s ferries, currently in service but good candidates for renewal, he said.

And if either or both boats are not deemed worth the effort, Stabbert could still take the boats from the state and begin a metals recycling process, at least freeing up space at Eagle Harbor.

Some wariness was expressed among the Legislature’s transportation leaders, specifically by Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, chair of the transportation committee. Liias told the Washington State Standard that the effort might not result in enough of a return on the state’s investment in leasing the boats.

While not speaking specifically to the leaseback proposal, however, Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, the committee’s ranking member, told the Standard that ferries remain a priority need.

“We need more ferries. We need to get them here as quickly as we can without breaking the bank,” he said.

Refits of two well-known boats — allowing a successful ship reconstruction business to use its expertise to take on that risk, then quickly returning those ferries to service — can provide a benefit to the state by reducing the likelihood of cancelled sailings and allow more certainty for passengers, commercial traffic and communities that depend on the ferries.

Even after the new ferries arrive, the refurbished boats could serve routes when other ferries need maintenance or suffer a mechanical problem.

It’s also could provide some needed assurance for Western Washington shipyards that the state hasn’t forgotten them, following the Legislature’s decision to end its “Build ‘em in Washington” practice when it opened up ferry construction contracts to out-of-state yards to quickly and affordably add some 16 ferries to the system by 2040.

There’s hope some of those might be built in Washington, but until then, safely and cost-effectively patching up vintage ferries can help return reliability to the state’s marine highways.

And it would be a better end for two beloved boats.

“If there were something that could be done with them that is beneficial to the state,” that’s an option that needs full consideration, Castanzo said. “Rather than taking them elsewhere and turning them into razor blades.”