Washington State Ferries is sailing with fewer boats than it needs this weekend after the Wenatchee struck a log, bending a propeller blade and damaging an inner shaft seal, while traveling through dense fog this week.
Unforeseen damage like this aside, the lack of boats is a result of years of delaying the construction of new vessels, as well as Gov. Bob Ferguson's decision last year to get as many ferries on the water as possible, putting the system into a tight situation where even one broken boat can throw off sailing schedules across Puget Sound.
That's the case this weekend. Agency officials say the Wenatchee may return to service Sunday, when the agency expects large numbers of passengers to head to the Seahawks NFC Championship Game against the Los Angeles Rams. But that is not guaranteed.
In the meantime, the agency has just 15 working ferries, when it needs 17 out of its total 21 ferries to run its full winter schedule. The Bremerton-Seattle and Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth triangle routes are each down a boat.
The Sealth, which can hold 90 cars and normally sails the triangle route, has been filling in for the 202-car Wenatchee on the Bainbridge run. The Sealth's smaller capacity has led to longer wait times.
If the Wenatchee returns to its normal Bainbridge sailing on Sunday, as WSF hopes, the Sealth would move to Bremerton to help with the large crowds heading to and from Seattle for the game. Then, late Sunday, the Sealth would return to the triangle route to restore three-boat weekday service there.
It's been a tough year for WSF. At just over three weeks into 2026, the state fleet has been missing nearly a third of its ferries, with six out of 21 vessels unable to sail for stretches of days, hampering service as WSF works to rebuild a depleted collection of ferries with an average age of 35 years.
The broken propeller on the Wenatchee echoes the issue with the Walla Walla, which connects Seattle to Bremerton. The Walla Walla had one of its blades sheared off on New Year’s Day, and is in drydock in Everett for repairs.
Built in 1972, the Walla Walla has come to symbolize the state’s tired fleet of boats, though it is not the oldest vessel. The Tilikum is the oldest operating ferry in the state system, the last of the Evergreen State class built in 1959.
At a presentation to the Senate Transportation Committee last week, WSF officials noted that just seven ferries have been built since the Puyallup was constructed in 1999, and the next new boat isn't expected until 2030 at the earliest.
They placed blame for the lack of boats on Initiative 695, which repealed existing fees and excise taxes on cars and imposed a flat $30 car tab fee. The 1999 ballot measure led to the loss of a pretty major part of our capital funding, which was sustaining our vessel construction program," said Jenna Forty, WSF's director of external relations.
Forty told legislators that seven vessels over 30 years "isn't a sustainable pace or predictable pace to replenish and modernize our fleet."
As has been the case for years, the ultimate goal is to completely electrify and modernize the fleet by 2040, a cornerstone of former Gov. Jay Inslee’s environmental legacy. Ferguson said he's "staying the course" with electrification — a $6.2 billion endeavor that includes building 16 new hybrid-electric vessels and adding charging stations to 16 terminals — and proposed $1 billion in this year’s transportation budget to build three new boats, with $150 million dedicated to maintenance.
But his resolve on electrification wobbled with the first conversion of its largest Jumbo Mark II boats to hybrid-electric power — the Wenatchee — which was costlier and more time-consuming than originally estimated. The Tacoma and Puyallup ferries would’ve followed the Wenatchee’s conversion by Vigor, which was expected to take about a year and cost $50 million. Instead, the state paid Vigor $86 million and the project took nearly two years, leading Ferguson to pause the conversion program.
Forrest Nichols, WSF's director of vessel engineering and maintenance, said at an online community forum this week that the Wenatchee's return to service after conversion was troubled, but any issues it has now aren't related to that conversion.
Nichols said the process of converting a 30-year old vessel, and marrying new control systems with old equipment, was difficult and "took longer than we hoped." But he said what the Wenatchee is facing this week could happen to any boat.
"Ferry boats are incredibly complex machines," he said.
At the same community forum, WSF chief Steve Nevey said the ferry system is on the mend, and getting better. He pointed to the increased number of sailings in 2025 — up by 7,000, and with ridership breaching 20 million for the first time since 2019 — and the decrease in cancelled sailings as signs of that.
"By every metric, we still continue to improve," he said.
But he was aware that the boat shortage, and the thin margin of error, would bedevil his agency, as it has so far this year.
"It's obvious that we don’t have enough for a bench of spare vessels," he said. "When just one boat gets taken out of service, the whole fleet suffers.
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