With a break in the weather on Tuesday, Alaska Seaplanes did its finest to fill the void left by another ferry breakdown. They flew three flights to Skagway and eight flights to Haines.
Alaska Seaplanes, of course, doesn’t take vehicles. Some well-connected travelers will enlist friends to drive their stranded automobiles onto the ferry when it is scheduled to arrive in Auke Bay on April 5th.
Others, like Andy and Juliene Miles, will simply have to wait for the Matanuska’s return. The good news for the Miles family is that they just had a beautiful baby, the not-so-good news is, they are stuck in Juneau.
“We were planning on finally heading home to get settled in here this week, but now we get to stay an extra week. We could fly but with having a baby and our car down here and all of the things that go along with a baby it’s kind of hard to just hop on a plane,” said Juliene Miles.
Flights were grounded on Monday due to weather, and the Municipality of Skagway considered hiring a private charter boat to fill the transportation void as they had two weeks prior. But flights resumed on Tuesday, and with waning public interest and no firm commitment from the state to cover costs, Skagway elected to not book the private vessel.
The Upper Lynn Canal has become accustomed to ferry breakdowns impacting travel plans over the past few years. State Senator Jesse Kiehl says Skagway and Haines are unique in their struggles.
“The state simply doesn’t have these kinds of ‘Single point of failure’ systems, unreliable transportation systems, elsewhere. Then ask communities to come in when something bad happens,” said the State Senator.
Kiehl said the current problems with the Matanuska involve the recently rebuilt propulsion system.
“She’s got bad engine parts over on the port side and AMHS has shipped these giant power pack units out of Louisiana for this ship which was just repowered, engines to propellers, a couple of years back, and it’s been breakdown after breakdown [since].”
State Representative Sara Hannan says the issues with the Alaska Marine Highway System are not temporary. She has been working closely on House Bill 63 which would restructure oversight of the beleaguered ferry system, and while the bill seems to have support, any changes will be slow-moving.
“Even in a positive scenario, it’s still likely to take two years,” said Hannan.
Two Alaska Class ferries were christened within the last three years. The Tazlina and the Hubbard. Neither of which are on the Alaska Marine Highway schedule this year.
The Hubbard still lacks a Coast Guard certification that the AMHS is reluctant to pursue with its price tag of nearly $1Million. That leaves the Tazlina, which is moored and not in service.
“The Tazlina which has a certificate of inspection and ran last summer, AMHS is holding firm that they’re not going to run it this summer because it can’t run the route because we don’t have crew quarters,” said Hannan.
Representative Hannan also said that due to Coast Guard restrictions, the crew can only be out to sea for up to 12 hours at a time without sleeping quarters. Round trips from Juneau that include stops in Skagway and Haines take too long. So the vessels would need to be fitted with crew quarters that would cost roughly $15million per vessel and take at least two years to complete.
A proposal to build a ferry terminal north of Juneau is unlikely to gain traction in the short term as well.
The Municipality of Skagway has formed an ad-hoc committee to generate creative ferry solutions for the Upper Lynn Canal. In the meantime, a single mainliner is what the Alaska Marine Highway is willing to offer this time of year. The LeConte is projected to be back online in mid-April, allowing for multiple runs per week.
