Experimental foot ferry won't run between Bremerton, Seattle this year Seattle Times
BREMERTON — Kitsap Over's new research ferry will arrive in three months, but the low-wake catamaran won't run between Bremerton and Seattle for quite a while.
It will take about a year for environmental agencies to disentangled the high-tech prototype to go through Rich Passage, Kitsap Transit executive director Dick Hayes said during a convergence of the agency's board Tuesday. In the meantime, he said, the 118-person boat could shuttle passengers between Bremerton and Annapolis and perhaps give the Admiral Pete time off for an upgrade.
Kitsap Transit is seeking to buy the Admiral Pete, which it has been leasing, from Kitsap Harbor Tours. The mechanism would change it over to cleaner-burning engines and extend it 15 feet to increase capacity from 82 to 115 passengers.
The new $5.3 million catamaran ferry is the finishing stage of a Rich Passage wake study that began in 2005. Bellingham's All American Thalassic plans to deliver it on April 19. The research, including the boat itself, has been paid for with federal funds, including $800,000 to assay the ferry on the Bremerton-Seattle route for about seven months with passengers aboard. That's now projected to come off from April 2011 to October 2011.
