Dry dock for ferry

PALMER — In an attempt to bring costs down, the Mat-Su Borough Assembly has ordered borough staff to proceed with plans to dry-dock the M/V Susitna.

The ferry, currently docked in Ketchikan, costs the borough $70,000 each month to keep it docked and in working order.

“This comes down to a gut-level confidence for me,” Assemblyman Steve Colligan said at Tuesday’s assembly meeting. “We’ve got to shore up and stem the bleeding here. The only option I’ve heard to get the monthly costs down to a couple thousand dollars a month rather than $70,000 a month is dry dock.”

The plan to dry-dock the experimental craft came from Cruz Marine, a Valley-based business that hauls all types of cargo to support construction projects statewide.

“The plan is to go to the port, remove the riprap area, dig down, put in the ferry cradle and then they bring it up in high tide,” borough manager John Moosey said in an interview Wednesday morning. “Then they put the riprap back and pump the water out.”

The plan requires relatively high water — two suitable tides are on the calendar in mid-September and mid-October.

“If things don’t go right the first time you’ve got a second opportunity,” Moosey said.

Estimates say the plan will cost the borough $1.1 million. Of that, $100,000 will be spent bringing the ferry from Ketchikan, the other $1 million will go to Cruz to do the dry-docking. The money will pay for it all — the construction work, the cradle, even running electric lines to the site to keep the vessel heated in the winter.

“They put it to sleep where they drain all the fluids, that kind of thing, kind of like your uncle does with his classic car he doesn’t want out in the winter,” Moosey said.

Moosey said the assembly has asked him to look for ways to bring down that cost as much as he can.

Although the decision to dry-dock the ferry eventually passed, two assemblymen spoke out against the plan.

“It’s not prudent to do it. As much as I’d like to see it here, I think the most prudent option would be — and it pains me to say it — continue to do what we’re doing in the short term and sell the boat and cut our losses,” Assemblyman Warren Keogh said, citing both the potential to damage the vessel in landing it and the unknown costs to refloat it if and when a use or a buyer is found.

Assemblyman Noel Woods also didn’t like the idea.

“It looks like our options are $1.25 million to bring it up for a year or $600,000 or $700,000 to leave it in Ketchikan for the same length of time,” Woods said.

As for the ongoing ferry costs, dry-docking the vessel at the port will save docking, wharfage and crew costs, but the borough will still need to pay insurance.

The vessel’s designer, Lew Madden, has previously advised the borough against the dry docking plan, saying the hull of the craft was not designed to support its own weight.

Last August, Finance Director Tammy Clayton told the assembly in response to a question from Assemblyman Warren Keogh that insurance probably wouldn’t cover damage to the vessel since it has been widely reported that there is a danger of damaging the ship if it’s stored in dry dock.

On Tuesday, Clayton said that her previous statements were for a proposal to drive the vessel up onto a beach, something the borough knew would be hazardous. Putting it in a special cradle, by contrast, would be akin to what the vessel experienced when it was being built.

“If you have it properly on the docks, it would be covered,” Clayton said. “But if you brought it in and did not properly dry dock it to where it was a known hazard … the insurance would not cover it.”

Moosey said Wednesday he’d task Clayton with talking to the insurance company and hammering out coverage details, like will the borough need more coverage?

“Can we reduce the coverage once it’s out of the water?” Moosey said. “There’s not going to be any problem getting it here, it’s just being cost effective.”

The ferry, a U.S. Navy prototype of a landing craft, was built in a Ketchikan shipyard. It has a catamaran-style dual-hull and can break ice for use in Cook Inlet in the winter. The Navy usually scraps its prototypes when it’s through with them.

The borough received the ferry for free through the largesse of the late Sen. Ted Stevens. The intent was to use it to make runs between Point MacKenzie and Anchorage.

Money from the Federal Transit Authority was spent outfitting it for passenger service and building a terminal building at Port MacKenzie. The borough estimates that $6 million of that will have to be repaid if no ferry service is established in Cook Inlet.

For months now the borough has tried and failed to sell the vessel to a buyer willing to pay enough to cover those FTA costs. Meanwhile, the costs just to maintain it have so far come to nearly $1.2 million.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.