— from the Washington State Ferries (WSF) —
UPDATE, Aug. 29 at 10 a.m.: Due to ongoing repairs on the M/V Hyak (one of the domestic San Juan Islands vessels), all international Sidney, B.C. sailings are cancelled through Thursday, August 30, while the M/V Chelan is reassigned to the domestic route.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Updates on international service for Friday, August 31 and beyond will be provided as they become available.
Aug. 24 at 11 a.m. It was a tough week on several of our routes with unplanned sailing cancellations and service disruptions on Fauntleroy/Vashon/Southworth, Edmonds/Kingston, Anacortes/San Juan Islands, and Seattle/Bainbridge. Thank you to all of our customers for your patience! We do our best to keep our aging vessels in service, and even though our reliability rating is regularly over 99%, we will continue to look for areas of improvement.
There is one ongoing service disruption to pay attention to if you plan to travel in the San Juan Islands this week. The 51-year-old Hyak, which is currently assigned to the Anacortes/San Juan Islands route, was pulled from service on Wednesday, Aug. 21, for urgent motor repairs. In order to maintain domestic service, all sailings to Sidney, British Columbia are canceled through Wednesday, Aug. 29, so Chelan can fill in for Hyak.
This boat move also cancels a morning round trip between Anacortes and Lopez Island, which we will make up with added and modified sailings using Samish and Kaleetan. Repairs are expected to take at least a week to complete. We will have a better idea early next week on when Hyak may be able to return to service so we can resume international sailings.
Please check the Anacortes/San Juan Islands schedule page for the modified schedule.
Why do they continue to keep aging boats? On another note we are on the Samish (newer boat? That had not been able to perform today. The red eye did not Anacortes until 9:15 while the later boat got in Anacortes before we did! Now on the way back tonOrcas (after a very long day and some missed appointments$ we are limping along home , apparently it is traveling at 11 knots instead of 16.
By choice we try not to go to the mainland on summer but oftennappontments must be kept and then apologized for being very late. Is there any hope this might imrove?
We watched non Washington vehicles being loaded while we were not sure we would be loaded. What happened to the days gone by of “locals” getting priority?
You know ….. the tax payers ? What is our County doing to help this situation? Why does Seattle short ribs get priority with newerbetter boats? Seems like we need to mobilize for locals priority ??
My apologies, this had been a 17 hour challenge and we are not home yet, just very tired. You know the feeling.