Joe Martinac wasn’t surprised when he heard last week that the Washington state ferry Klickitat had been pulled from service with a 6-inch crack seeping water into its hull.
The Tacoma shipbuilder has spent a decade and $2.5 million trying to get the state to replace the Klickitat and three other 1927-vintage vessels in the fleet.
The 80-year-old Klickitat and the other Steel Electric class vessels owned by the state are the oldest ferries operating in salt water in the U.S.
Those ferries also are relics from another age.
When the Klickitat first went into service, Calvin Coolidge was president, Charles Lindbergh became an international superstar for flying solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and people were lining up to watch “talkies,” the first movies to feature sound.
Last year, nearly 767,000 passengers rode the Klickitat and other Steel Electric ferries between Keystone Harbor on Whidbey Island and Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.
The Klickitat’s most recent crack is just one of six breaches or holes found in its riveted steel-plate hull over the last 10 years, according to a review of maintenance records by Washington State Ferries.
Emergency repairs for those problems, as well work on damaged rudders and decks, have sidelined the ferry 11 times since 1997.
On Monday, Coast Guard inspectors ordered the Klickitat out of the water when they examined a crack ferry engineers had discovered two days earlier. Ferry engineers had welded a patch over the crack, but the Coast Guard decided the problem warranted more attention.
Washington State Ferries spent $50,000 replacing a steel plate that had been welded to the ferry in the 1950s.
For two and a half days – while the Klickitat was being repaired – ferry service from Whidbey Island to the Olympic Peninsula was canceled.
Fight over replacements
The aging ferry and its sister vessels are falling apart and it is past time to pull them from service, Martinac said.
“There is just a fundamental safety issue and in concert with that a virtual unlimited liability,” he said.
Although their need for repairs is more frequent than newer vessels, the Klickitat and its sister ferries are safe, Washington State Ferries spokeswoman Susan Harris-Huether said.
“It’s like a car,” she said. “As the vessels get older, you have more repairs to do and the parts for these repairs get harder and harder to find and often have to be manufactured ourselves – jury-rigged if you will.”
State lawmakers agree the Steel Electrics need to be consigned to history. In 2001 they passed legislation directing the state Department of Transportation to build replacements.
Martinac wants his company to have a share of that work. He envisions ferries with a new power system and different layout than the vessels the ferry system is planning for.
But instead of building boats, he’s been battling state ferry officials for that chance, lobbying the Legislature and heading to court.
The company has litigation pending in state and federal courts, including a case alleging that Washington officials have engaged in what amounts to civil racketeering in undermining Martinac’s hopes of building replacement ferries.
Much of the racketeering complaint focuses on what Martinac describes as the inadequacy of the Klickitat and its sister ships.
Boats don’t meet code
None of the Steel Electrics meet safety requirements, dating from the mid-1950s, that require ferry hulls to be divided into multiple, water-tight spaces and to be able to remain afloat even if more than one of those compartments fills with water.
The shipbuilder met with officials from the U.S. Coast Guard in Washington, D.C., six years ago to raise concerns about Washington’s continued use of the Klickitat and other Steel Electrics, said Martinac’s attorney, Jed Powell, of the Seattle law firm Cairncross and Hempelmann.
Martinac seriously considered adding the Coast Guard as defendants in the federal case, Powell said.
“The United States Coast Guard has blessed these boats and we are mystified why,” he said.
State officials are scornful of Martinac’s claims.
“I can say confidently the state will be doing everything it can through its attorneys to prove that that lawsuit is ridiculous – and ridiculous is an accurate term,” said Steve Reinmuth, director of government relations for the state Department of Transportation. “The lawsuit has no merit. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money to have to defend it, but we will.”
Reinmuth said lawsuits are the only reason the Klickitat and the other aging ferries already haven’t been replaced.
State Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee, is among the people in state government accused by Martinac of having worked against timely replacement of the Klickitat and its sister ferries.
“I can assure you, as somebody who represents the ferry district, I would never, never stand for that,” Haugen, D-Camano Island, said. “I think our ferries are safe.”
She said there is no question that the Klickitat and the other ferries need to go; however, money, and now the legal tangle, is preventing progress.
“There are some major problems with these old vessels other than if they keep running or not,” Haugen said. “Like any old vehicle or any old piece of machinery, the older they get, the more you have to maintain them and you have to watch them that much more closely – and that becomes costly.”
The ferries were designed at a time when T’s, not V’s, reigned supreme. Their narrow lanes were laid out for Model T Fords, and are a tight squeeze for today’s SUVs and RVs.
The vessels’ age also means they have outdated steering and electrical systems and riveted hulls, which fell out of favor after World War II, according to John Dwyer, chief of the Coast Guard’s Puget Sound area inspection division.
The Klickitat operates under a waiver of Coast Guard rules regarding hull-compartment design. But its safe operation is ensured by maintenance inspections and other requirements to increase passenger safety, Dwyer said.
Extra life boats – enough for all passengers – are kept aboard the Steel Electric ferries for this reason, Dwyer said.
“If the ferries were dangerous we wouldn’t let them operate; that goes without saying,” he said.
State transportation officials say they take hope from a recent Thurston County Superior Court decision that found against Martinac and another shipbuilder who had challenged the ferry system’s handling of bids to replace the Steel Electric ferries.
An appeal to the state Supreme Court is planned, Powell said.
Reinmuth said state officials plan to award a contract to build the new ferries by year’s end.
“We just want to cut through the delay and build the boat taxpayers need,” he said.
Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431 or north@heraldnet.com.
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