First ferry built for Washington state system sells — again — for $200K

— from Seattle PI —

A pile of scrap metal or sold off at auction to someone with a dream. Those are the two usual fates that await a 60-something-year-old Washington State Ferry.

Unless that dreamer wants to pass along the opportunity at sailing the “largest registered private yacht,” which is exactly what happened with the Evergreen State, the first boat built specifically for use as a ferry in Puget Sound. After being bought for $300,000 at auction in 2018 by Greg Jones, an entrepreneur from Florida, under the buyer name of Jones Broadcasting, it was put back on the auction block.

The unnamed (as of Monday) buyer cast the winning bid on eBay at $205,100. Theoretically the boat could sail again under the new owner, but a few steps get in the way of that, WSF spokesman Ian Sterling told SeattlePI.

“Once the ferry has been officially sold, it has inspections to go through by the Coast Guard before it’s able to be used fully,” Sterling said. “But once that’s done, you could drive cars right on it and sail it.”

The Evergreen State was first put out to pasture in 2016, about 60 years after it was first built — a typical lifespan for a Washington State Ferry. Sterling put the build year in the early 1950s, “maybe ’54,” (it was completed in 1954) but it wasn’t a completely brand new ship then. The drive motors for the boat and the two other ferries in its class, the Tillikum and Klahowya, were surpluses from World War II.

Of the three boats built “brand-new” for the then-new ferry system, the Tillikum is the only one still idling through Puget Sound. It now serves the route from Anacortes to various San Juan islands. The Klahowya was decommissioned in 2017, and sits in Eagle Harbor with the Hyak, both waiting for auction. Sterling told SeattlePI the Hyak would likely be the next, followed by the Klahowya.

But if someone’s thinking of buying the Evergreen State, or the Klahowya in a few years, to cross from Eagle Harbor to Elliott Bay quicker, Sterling suggested to think again.

The old boats were just too slow for the faster, open-water routes like Seattle to Bainbridge Island, thus the Tillikum was relegated to the slower routes up north.

“There was one time that people talk about, when one of the boats from that class were put on a route with a newer vessel,” Sterling said. “People were thankful to catch the earlier, but older, boat which left ten minutes before the new one did. However, pretty soon they saw the newer one catch up to them and pass them by.”

As for the Evergreen State, the seller hasn’t got back in touch with SeattlePI about the buyer, so the future was still unclear for the small piece of Washington state transportation history. The boat could double as a music venue, as an older one does in South Lake Union, it could end up as a private yacht, or it might just be sold to the scrap heap.

Or maybe it could ferry a car across Puget Sound again.