SEATTLE — Washington State Ferries has announced the sale of two decommissioned vessels and the pending sale of a third.
The vessels have been sold to Nelson Armas for $100,000 each for recycling at a steel mill in Ecuador.
The Elwha, a 144-car Super-class ferry built in 1968, is named for the Elwha River. The vessel primarily worked the route between Anacortes/Friday Harbor/Sidney, B.C. until it was retired on April 8, 2020.
The 87-car Evergreen-class vessel Klahowya was built in 1958 and worked the Fauntleroy/Vashon/Southworth route until it moved to the San Juan Islands’ inter-island route in 2014.
Upon its retirement on July 1, 2017, the Klahowya was replaced on the San Juan route by its sister ship, the Tillicum.
Klahowya is a greeting in the Chinook language.
The other vessel in the class, the Evergreen State, was sold to a private buyer in March 2017 and was last reported to be moored in Bellingham.
The Elwha and Klahowya have been moored at the ferry system’s Eagle Harbor maintenance facility on Bainbridge Island since their retirement.
“After safely serving our customers for more than five decades each, the sale of these two retired ferries will free up our docking space so we can focus vessel maintenance needs on our current fleet,” said Steve Nevey, the assistant secretary of Washington State Ferries. “In addition, any time we needed to move these decommissioned boats to allow for vessel or terminal maintenance, there was a cost for a tugboat, and we needed a tow captain on board, taking away a crewmember from working on one of our routes.”
The ferries Elwha and Klahowya, both of which have had all hazardous materials removed, are under tow to Ecuador by the tugboat Wycliffe. Their voyage can be followed at www.tinyurl.com/PDN-Wycliffe.
The pending sale is the ferry Hyak, which has been moored at the Kingston ferry terminal since it was decommissioned on June 30, 2019.
The Hyak was built in 1967 as the lead vessel in the Super-class. Its name means “speedy” in Chinook.
The other two vessels in the class, Kaleetan and Yakima, are still in service; Yakima is on the Anacortes/San Juan Islands route and Kaleetan is on the Seattle/Bremerton route.
