NEAH BAY – The rescue tug Gladiator will return to the Northwest’s northwesternmost tip Monday for an abbreviated season of protecting the state’s Pacific coast and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Unlike past years when tugs remained on station into early May, the Gladiator will depart Neah Bay in mid-March.
That’s because the state Legislature, although it increased the per-day payments for the tug, did not pay for the 136-foot, 7,200-horsepower tug’s fuel.
After that, nothing guarantees that a winter tug – much less a year-round rescue vessel – will reappear.
Since 1999, Gladiator and its predecessors went to the aid of 34 ships in distress off Cape Flattery or in the Strait during the winter storm seasons.
The 34th mission came last May 3 – the tug’s last day at Neah Bay.
Environmentalists and politicians from Washington’s marine counties long have called for a year-round tug.
U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Mountlake Terrace, has proposed funding one in a Coast Guard appropriations bill and in a separate piece of oil-spill protection legislation.
