PORT TOWNSEND – Few understand the need for new ferries on the Port Townsend-Keystone route better than those who maintain and run the 1920s-era Steel Electric vessels.
While he said the Port Townsend ferry dock is fine, MV Klickitat Chief Engineer Andy DeGraaf describes the Keystone ferry terminal on Whidbey Island as something short of a ferry captain’s nightmare.
“When the wind is blowing between 30 and 40 knots in the worst weather, it’s the worst dock in the system,” DeGraaf said unabashedly to reporters gathered aboard the Klickitat on Tuesday.
Reporters from both sides of Admiralty Inlet experienced a close-up tour of the vessel’s bowels, including where the Klickitat sustained a six-inch stress crack in the hull in March.
DeGraaf, who has supervised routine inspections aboard the Klickitat for 14 years and has been a part of the ferry system for 22 years, said he believes that the crack was found shortly after the vessel hit a dolphin – a cluster of pilings – at the Keystone landing dock.
The dock is a new captain’s disaster waiting to happen, he said, with little or no room to correct the course of the ferry.
“If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re going to end up on the beach,” DeGraaf said.
He blames Keystone’s inadequate landing area for damage to ferries, including hull cracks.
Then there’s the concern he has for replacing environmentally harmful creosote pilings with steel and concrete.
“They’re transferring damage from docks to boats,” he said.
