By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
Four months after delaying plans to return the M/V Columbia to service, the Alaska Department of Transportation has announced that the flagship of the Alaska Marine Highway fleet will return to sea in February.
The Columbia has been out of service and docked in Ketchikan as a cost cutting measure since 2019. Last August DOT said the ship would be back sailing by November, but due to staffing shortages that didn’t happen and instead the Matanuska and M/V Kennicott have covered mainline sailings this winter.
“There were a couple of reasons. One of them is that the Columbia requires more crew to operate,” DOT spokesman Sam Dapcevich told the newspaper today. “And at that time, after going through and figuring out what it was going to take to keep the Columbia operating through the winter, it made more sense to run the Kennicott up until it went into overhaul and then we had a little bit of a gap and then the Matanuska was going to come out of her overhaul and run. Late breaking news - over the Matanuska’s overhaul, they learned about the extensive wasted steel issue and then the asbestos.”
If the Columbia re-enters the active fleet, that will allow the Matanuska to undergo some much-needed maintenance and refitting work. The Matanuska has been docked for the past two months already, Dapcevich noted, though there is not yet a specific time line on repairs.
“The Matanuska entered her overhaul in November 2022, where crews uncovered additional wasted steel and hazardous materials, both of which require additional time for removal and repair in the shipyards,” DOT said in an announcement Wednesday. “Due to the extra time and expense… (AMHS is) considering pursuing an extended overhaul.”
While the ship is at dock in Ketchikan for repairs, it will be used to house AMHS staff, the announcement said.
While the Columbia has been moored, the ship has undergone refit.
“We’re confident that (the Columbia) will be up and running in mid-February... It’s been operating as a hotel ship in Ketchikan for a while. We’ve had AMHS staff staying on board as needed. The Matanuska will be doing the same thing while it’s undergoing this longer-term overhaul. But during the time that Columbia was down in Ketchikan over the last few years, it’s kind of been in an extended overhaul itself. Quite a bit of work has taken place. And so they were actually pretty confident that they were going to have it online in November until we switched back to the Matanuska-Kennicott plan.”
For the time being, the Marine Highway calendar indicates that Sitka, and other Southeast communities, will receive some service from the Columbia through April, with limited sailings of the M/V LeConte in February. This month, the smaller Kennicott has sailed twice to Sitka, but no ferry service is planned for Sitka until February. Northbound service from Sitka is set to be minimal for the remainder of the winter, but more regular southbound service is planned through the winter months, with departures roughly once a week.
Schedules are posted online at https://dot.alaska.gov/amhs/schedules.shtml. The Columbia will not be able to recreate the originally planned schedule.
“They are currently updating that schedule. The Matanuska will be removed and the Columbia will be added. The Columbia schedule will not match Matanuska’s schedule exactly, because Colombia will not be making stops and Prince Rupert... Also the Matanuska would have been making stops in Kake. The Columbia is not at this time able to dock and Kake,” Dapcevich added. AMHS plans supplemental ferry sailings to Kake.
