Damaged propeller takes popular ferry route down to one boat

The Edmonds-Kingston route returned to a two-boat service as a trial on Jan. 1. Days before the service restoration plan was to become permanent, crew members aboard the MV Puyallup ferry noticed an unusual vibration while sailing.

Washington State Ferry spokesperson Justin Fujioka told KIRO Newsradio the issue was a bent propeller which is now under repair.

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“So just for a little bit of background, we are currently restoring service on a route-by-route basis based on our service restoration plan,” explained Fujioka. “We successfully completed Anacortes, San Juan Islands, Seattle, Bainbridge, Mukilteo to Clinton, and we had just started trialing our Edmonds-Kingston route back to two-boat pre-pandemic service levels on January 1. Our crewing, which has been a hindrance for our service levels recently, is at a good place that we can run two boats on our Edmonds-Kingston route.”

He went on to share that it was a vessel issue from two weeks ago. The crew members aboard the MV Puyallup ferry noticed vibrations when they were sailing. State ferries did an inspection and noticed there was a damaged propeller.

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“So once that happened, we immediately took the vessel out of service. And unfortunately, we don’t have any spare boats to fill in for the moment right now because we have a lot of boats out for unexpected repairs,” Fujioka said. “So what we are doing right now is, unfortunately, back to one boat service on Edmonds-Kingston.”

Once the ferry Puyallup is repaired, it will be placed back in service, where the three-week service restoration plan restarts all over again.

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