Construction on Islander Replacement Resumes at Full Tilt After Hurricane

By James Kinsella
Gazette Senior Writer

While work has resumed on the Steamship Authority's new Island Home car and passenger ferry, the vessel will not be delivered until a year from now.

The vessel, which is slated to replace the Islander on the Vineyard-Woods Hole run, originally had been scheduled for delivery next June.

The ferry now is scheduled to be launched July 17 at the VT Halter Marine shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., according to Carl Walker, director of engineering for the boat line.

Mr. Walker's update on the ferry construction project came at the monthly Steamship Authority meeting in Woods Hole yesterday morning.

Late last month Mr. Walker visited the shipyard, which was battered along with the rest of the Gulf Coast in August by Hurricane Katrina. After a hiatus caused by the hurricane, shipyard employees have resumed work on the Island Home.

In other news yesterday, boat line managers announced a Nov. 29 meeting with the Oak Bluffs conservation commission to discuss the revised plans for the Oak Bluffs terminal; and reported that two private licensed carriers, Hy-Line and Cape and Islands Transportation, have requested permission to carry more passengers. Senior managers also took the wraps off a new merchandising program that will include the sale of coffee mugs and watercolor prints through the boat line's web site.

As for the Island Home, SSA general manager Wayne Lamson has said the boat line will continue to run the Islander on the Vineyard route until the replacement ferry joins the fleet.

Mr. Walker said about 70 per cent of Halter's employees have returned to production work. Just a few weeks ago, 50 per cent of the employees were still engaged in clean up and shipyard reconstruction. In recent weeks, Mr. Walker said Halter employees attached a bow to the Island Home hull.

As of Sept. 30, the boat line had spent $10.7 million on the vessel; total construction cost is expected to be $32.8 million. Mr. Walker said vendors providing materials for the Island Home are being paid, despite the damage done to the shipyard by the hurricane.

He reported that construction work is under way on two other SSA vessels: the freight boat Sankaty, slated to receive a mid-body addition at the North Florida Shipyard in Jacksonville, Fla., and the boat line's new Nantucket high speed ferry, which is under construction at Gladding-Hearn shipyard in Somerset.

The requests from both the Hy-Line and Cape and Islands Transport, which runs the Pied Piper seasonally on the Falmouth-Edgartown route, to carry more passengers or run more trips, drew skeptical remarks from boat line governors, including Vineyard governor and board chairman Marc Hanover. Licenses issued by the SSA for both of the private ferries expire at the end of the year.

Mr. Hanover said he agreed with a concern expressed by port council member Eric Asendorf about whether the SSA is cannibalizing its own business if it allows the private carriers to expand.

Murray Scudder, Hy-Line's vice president for operations, said the company wants to expand the allowed number of passengers on the Grey Lady, the high speed ferry that operates on the Nantucket route in competition with the SSA's high speed ferry Flying Cloud. The Grey Lady is currently limited to 149 passengers, and Hy-Line owners want to expand to the Coast Guard-rated capacity of 298 on a year-round basis.

The SSA has allowed Hy-Line to carry more passengers only when the Flying Cloud is out of service, when fog closes down the airports, or when large school groups are traveling.

"In the present environment, with consumer preference for ferry travel clearly favoring high-speed service as the preferred mode of transportation, it makes little sense to Hy-Line, the Authority or the public to restrict the capacity and force the public to travel on less desirable traditional ferries or at less desirable times," Mr. Scudder wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to the SSA.

The owners of the Pied Piper, meanwhile, would like the option of running an additional ferry trip off-Island on Sundays and holidays as demand dictates.

Boat line governors are expected to vote on the requests at their meeting next month.

In his monthly business report, Mr. Lamson said passenger traffic remains down; for the first nine months of the year, passenger traffic is off 2.2 per cent compared with the same period last year.

Automobile traffic was up .1 percent for the month of September, but down 1.2 per cent down for the first nine months of the year. Truck traffic was up 13.3 per cent for the month, and up 11 per cent for the first nine months of the year.

Boat line governors voted 4-0, with Barnstable governor Robert O'Brien abstaining, to reappoint Deloitte & Touche LLP to provide a financial audit and related services for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31. The SSA will pay the firm $97,000.

An attempt by the boat line to draw more competition for the audit through competitive bidding was unsuccessful.