WTF WSF? Ferry advisory committee member addresses schedule concerns

— from Jim Corenman, Ferry Advisory Committee member —

Orcas Issues recently contacted our Ferry Advisory Committee member to address our burning question about the reason for so many recent deviations from the posted ferry schedule: WTF WSF?

The good news is that summer schedule is only a few days away, but one of the most vexing problems (Elwha) may not go away. 

First, we’ve got to remember that spring and fall are shoulder seasons, and transitional. Traffic is light in the winter into early spring (March), but as summer approaches traffic increases towards summer levels. In previous years this was a slow transition, but reservations have been successful at pushing visitors into traveling earlier in the spring and later in the fall, and also pushes locals earlier and later in each day to get a reservation. Also, in years past, summer schedule started in early June, but this was shifted to late June a couple of years ago. This year spring schedule started at the end of March and runs through June 23– which is a very busy time. 

So the spring/fall schedule is a compromise — more service than needed in March and early April and less than needed in June. And by June we are suffering full boats, more traffic than can be loaded/unloaded in the allotted dwell-time, and boats get late– but usually not more than 20-30 min by the end of the day on a busy June weekend. “Better a late boat than no boat” has been the mantra. 

The real problem this spring is lack of boats– WSF is out of spare boats. So when the 144-car Samish had to go in for service for three months, the substitute was a smaller boat– 90-car Sealth for 7 weeks, then the 124-car Chelan for the next four weeks. That is a loss of thousands of spaces a week, compounding the already stressed schedule. Friday Harbor felt most of the capacity reduction, but the “extra” afternoon sailing to Orcas on Thursday-Friday was shifted to Friday Harbor to make up some of the shortfall. But that adds another 30 minutes or so to an already-tight sailing, which makes that boat late on those days. (Samish was warranty work– fire mains– but the builder doesn’t offer loaners). 

There is another factor: Because we have four boats serving six terminals, the schedules for the various islands are necessarily intertwined with boats often arriving at the same terminal only 10-15 minutes apart. When one boat gets 20 min late, the next boat also becomes late. “Lateness is infectious,” someone recently said. 

And the clear winner of this season’s late-boat award is the Elwha. This is no surprise to Orcaas riders because Elwha does four of the runs to/from Orcas and Shaw, plus one Sidney run. (In summer, the smaller Chelan does two Sidney runs a day– plus an early Lopez sailing– leaving the mainland boats to do the mainland traffic). 

The Elwha has gotten so far behind recently that she has nearly lapped itself on a few occasions– being so late that its 6:30 p.m. sailing runs into the late 8:55 p.m. sailing. When this happens it either just runs hours late, or a sailing gets canceled if everyone will fit onto the one sailing. 

So why is the Elwha such a late-boat problem? That is a mystery that we are exploring with WSF. They have reduced speed crossing Haro Straits on the Sidney run to reduce noise for the orca, but that is a relatively short part of the trip and a small effect on the schedule. The vexing part is that some days Elwha runs at normal speeds (16 kts) and stays more-or-less on schedule (given the late-spring traffic). On other days she runs 2-3 knots slower and is an hour late getting back from Sidney, throwing the afternoon sailings into disarray. 

Why not adjust the schedule? There is no funding to add crew hours, so the only option is to cut service– i.e. drop a sailing which would have a devastating effect on everyone.