No dry dock for ferry

PALMER — So what’s the Mat-Su Borough’s plan for the twin-hulled ice-breaking military prototype ferry M/V Susitna?

No one really knows yet, but one thing’s for sure: despite a vote late last month in favor of dry-docking the ferry, the vessel will not, in fact, be dry-docked in the Valley.

At least not this year, anyway.

That’s because of a permitting problem. To park the ferry on dry land at Port MacKenzie would require a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. As it turns out, some port-area road projects are out of compliance with the corps, which has in turn put a hold on a borough permit to expand its barge dock until that issue is resolved.

“I had thought that had been done years ago,” Port Director Mark VanDongen said of the corps requirements for the road. “I thought it was a simple thing. Turns out it was not.”

So dry-docking’s out. What options are left on the table?

Turns out some of the other options are actually more palatable. J.P. Stormont, the ship’s captain, said he’d come up with a plan to keep the vessel in Ketchikan for a fraction of what the borough is currently paying.

Yearly costs are now more than $900,000. Under Stormont’s plan, what he called a “wet lay-up” with bare minimum staffing and a reduced rate on dockage fees, he said he could get costs down to $210,000 a year. But, he said, the ship won’t be waiting at the ready for potential buyers.

“If you have someone that wants to go down and have a boat ride you’re going to have to get a crew down there,” Stormont said.

Stormont, though, said he favors getting rid of the vessel. A former captain for the Alaska Marine Highway System, including stints captaining both of that system’s high-speed vessels, he said a high-speed craft like the Susitna is more of a headache than the borough needs. Ongoing maintenance costs will be high, he said.

“You’d be better off building a ferry and getting rid of the high-speed vessel,” he said.

Borough mayor Larry DeVilbiss asked if it would be possible to avoid some of those costs if the borough just had the vessel de-certified as a high-speed craft.

Stormont said the borough could do that and avoid a lot of the costs, but would likely still have to pay for a more expensive, more experienced crew.

Dave Cruz of Cruz Maritime and a member of the borough’s port commission, said he’s still a believer in the Susitna. He said the borough is investing heavily in Port MacKenzie.

“We’ll have $400 million in Port MacKenzie and Anchorage can’t get there,” he said.

The ferry, he said, is crucial for the moving of warehouses across Knik Arm to populate the new port.

Cruz also was the person who proposed the dry dock plan. At Thursday’s meeting, he said there was yet another option: dock the ferry at the borough’s own port and transfer it to Seward each winter until it’s in service. Cruz pointed out that people might be more receptive to the idea of ferry service if they could actually see and touch the vessel.

There wasn’t a heck of a lot of support for Cruz’s position, though. Assemblyman Warren Keogh said he favors a ferry service, but doesn’t think the borough should run it and he doesn’t see anyone stepping up to operate a ferry service business.

“Who is going to do that?” he asked. “Nobody that I can see, which leaves us with the option of selling it.”

Assemblyman Vern Halter also favors selling the vessel.

VanDongen didn’t express an opinion, but gave a rundown of what it would cost to get the ferry in service. Landings on both sides, he said, would likely cost $61 million. There would be another $7 million to upgrade a road to the dock on the Anchorage side, something the Alaska Railroad, which owns the land the dock would sit on, has set as a condition of allowing the borough to land there.

There’s another couple of million to relocate the company currently operating out of that piece of the coastline, Cook Inlet Tug and Barge.

All-told, he estimated, the borough would need to scrape together $70 million, and that’s not counting the $3 million he estimates it will have to pay annually to subsidize the ferry service.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or

andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.