Regarding Jerry Cornfield’s recent articles like Sunday’s “The M.V. Lemon?” I am not a boater, nor a “marine engineer,” but won’t the adding of 90 tons of ballast to “level out” the empty ferries Chetzemoka, Salish and Kennewick cause them to ride deeper in the water? And why wouldn’t this drive up fuel consumption costs, making those ferries more expensive to operate? If the boats would ride level with the added ballast, would they then list with a full load of vehicles? So the boats now list when empty (which is not a safety issue according to WSF), but ride level when loaded with vehicles, what does that hurt? Who is riding an “empty” ferry? It appears that the planned solution to the listing issue is to “ballast up” the empty boats with an equivalent weight of a full load of vehicles. Sounds like more waste to me. Guess who pays the bill?
R.L. (Bob) Reich
Freeland
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