Nothing like it on the water

The ferry being built for an Anchorage-Point MacKenzie route is a U.S. Navy prototype being hailed as the most original Navy vehicle since the submarine.

M/V Susitna is no typical civilian ferry — it’s a military prototype for a new breed of craft that can transport tanks and troops, break the density of ice that forms in the Knik Arm and travel the open seas on its catamaran hulls.

The vessel is being completed in a Ketchikan shipyard. It was backed by Alaska’s Washington, D.C., representatives as well as the Federal Transit Administration and the Office of Naval Research.

The vessel will carry as many as 20 vehicles and 100 passengers. It can operate in three ways:

• As a catamaran at high speeds.

• As a small-water-area-twin-hull configuration for stability in high seas.

• As a shallow-draft landing craft providing the ability to operate in shallow water.

The Susitna will also be the world’s first ice-breaking twin-hulled vessel.

The Federal Transit Administration is providing about $17 million for the ferry terminal buildings, the Anchorage and Mat-Su landings and the engineering, design and furnishings aboard the ferry, the Mat-Su Borough reports.

“The ship will have a center barge that can be hydraulically raised and lowered,” the Alaska Ship and Drydock Web site reports about the new vessel. “It also will have the option to adjust the buoyancy of its catamaran hulls while underway. The vessel will demonstrate the functionality of a ship that can provide a multipurpose, expeditionary cargo and troop ship that performs efficiently at high speed, in ice and in shallow waters, and that can even beach itself to load/discharge vehicles up to tank size.”

The Susitna’s original projected price tag was $44 million, but according to a letter sent to Anchorage’s assembly chair the bill now stands at $55 million. Construction began in February, providing jobs in the Ketchikan area.

Van Dongen said the U.S. Navy is excited about the project because while prototypes like the M/V Susitna are usually tested and then mothballed, the Susitna will be used in rough waters as a regular working vessel so the Navy can see how it performs over time.

It will also be equipped as a mobile command center in the event of disasters, and can help in search and rescue if a plane or helicopter should crash into the water from Ted Stevens International Airport and other airfields.

“One of our challenges is we’ll sometimes build what to us is a prototype vessel like this and we’ll go out to operate it for six months or a year and learn a lot from it and then we don't know what to do with it,” said Rear Admiral William E. Landay III, chief of Naval research, when the project was announced last year. “And so frequently they end up on the scrap heap somewhere or tied up. What’s excited us about this is the fact that the Borough is very interested in it. So we’ll continue to get information as the Borough operates it.”

Contact John R. Moses at john.moses@frontiersman.com or call 352-2270.