Next destination for Kalakala is Tacoma, vows ferry’s owner

Published 12:01 am Friday, July 2, 2004

Kalakala owner Steve Rodrigues plans to settle a lawsuit with the Makah tribe, and tow the aging 1935 ferry to a Tacoma shipyard before Sept. 1 to begin restoration work.

“If we do not get the ship out by Sept. 1 Mother Nature is going to sink the Kalakala,” Steve Rodrigues said Thursday at his Kalakala Alliance Foundation museum-office in Port Angeles.

Neah Bay at the state’s northwest tip is notorious for surging swells and sometimes brutal wind-driven storms.

Last year, J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. offered temporary moorage to the silver vessel in Thea Foss Waterway alongside downtown Tacoma.

“That’s still a possibility,” Joe Martinac, the company’s president, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

“The 276-foot-long vessel “deserves a lot better than it’s gotten in the last couple years,” Martinac said.