SEATTLE — Two boats that served as Washington State Ferries (WSF) vessels for over 50 years are headed to a South American country after a recent sale.
WSF announced Friday that the Elwha and Klahowya were each sold to a businessman. Each boat was sold for $100,000.
Per Friday's release, the new owner plans to tow the ferries to a "clean, green steel mill facility" in Ecuador for recycling. WSF says both vessels are certified to be free of hazardous materials.
The boats were scheduled to depart a maintenance facility on Bainbridge Island at 9:30 a.m. Monday morning and will connect with a tugboat to be dragged out of the Puget Sound. WSF shared a link where the tow can be tracked in real-time, available here.
“After safely serving our customers for more than five decades each, the sale of these two retired ferries will free up our docking space so we can focus vessel maintenance needs on our current fleet,” said WSF Assistant Secretary Steve Nevey in a statement. “In addition, any time we needed to move these decommissioned boats to allow for vessel or terminal maintenance, there was a cost for a tugboat, and we needed a tow captain on board, taking away a crewmember from working on one of our routes.”
Elwha mainly served the Anacortes/Friday Harbor/Sidney, British Columbia route for WSF before its retirement in April 2020. Klahowya mainly operated the Fauntleroy/Vashon/Southworth route before moving to the San Juan Islands interisland route in 2014. It was retired in July 2017.