West Seattle Water Taxi: Different boat Monday morning

(Melissa Ann, photographed Friday by Donna Payne)
If you’re taking the West Seattle Water Taxi, you’ll be riding Melissa Ann on Monday morning instead of Rachel Marie. The regular WS boat has broken down, the county just announced – BUT they say there will be NO CHANGE in the special, increased schedule:

Mechanical problem to the Rachel Marie causes change in vessels for Monday morning sailings-

A mechanical problem to the Rachel Marie will keep her out of service this Monday, October 24. The Victoria Clipper III will service the Vashon Island Route. The Melissa Ann will be servicing the West Seattle Route. Both routes will run their regularly scheduled sailings (including additional West Seattle service) and neither route’s capacity will be impacted.

The Melissa Ann and Rachel Marie are “twins.”

monosyllabic girl October 24, 2011 (12:14 am)

Nice timing, Rachel.

asteria October 24, 2011 (12:19 am)

Trick or Treat! (a little early)

Gene October 24, 2011 (12:32 am)

I was just talking about the possibility of a break down for the Water Taxi and was hoping King County would use the Vashon boat for the West Seattle run if needed. VERY glad that they made the call to do so – thanks for the heads up!

WSB October 24, 2011 (12:44 am)

Gene – someone had asked us a few days ago what the county’s backup plan was. We sent them the question but didn’t get a reply (and I didn’t re-send, got diverted). So .. now we know! – TR

valvashon October 24, 2011 (2:36 am)

How about running one of the “twin” boats and the old “Sightseer”? The SIghtseer could depart the opposite dock at the opposite time. You’ve doubled (maybe not quite) your capacity!

Val

KatherineL October 24, 2011 (8:44 am)

It’s broken down AGAIN?! Does anyone besides me think this boat was a bad bargain? Why does it break down so much more often than the other ferries?

WSB October 24, 2011 (8:49 am)

KL – The county will be building its own boats (we have a story in the works on where that stands) – these are just being leased.

55thAlki October 24, 2011 (12:08 pm)

Does the Victoria Clipper III have more passenger capacity than the Melissa Ann?

If so, why don’t they use the Clipper for the West Seattle water taxi run this week since they did not have enough capacity for all the passengers this morning and had to make people wait for the next boat?

ForrestF October 24, 2011 (4:51 pm)

It looks like the Victoria Clipper III is in fact significantly larger than the Melissa Ann, in fact it’s almost 40ft longer. The West Seattle dock is probably not big enough for the larger vessel.

JumpNDfire October 24, 2011 (5:23 pm)

The VC III is actually not much (11 ft I think) longer than Melissa. It can sail with more passengers but not to the King County docks since there is a US Coast Guard security requirement for anything above 150 passengers. There was an article in the Vashon blog about the possibilty of increasing the capacity on the Melissa Ann.