WATER TAXI ALERT: West Seattle, Vashon service ‘temporarily reduced’ starting Monday

11:04 AM: Back on Tuesday, Metro announced M/V Doc Maynard had gone out of service on the West Seattle Water Taxi route because of propeller damage. Now it’s happened to at least one other boat and that means “temporarily reduced” WT service for both West Seattle and Vashon. Here’s the update we received a short time ago:

Service on the King County Water Taxi West Seattle and Vashon routes will be temporarily reduced beginning Monday, Nov. 28, due to mechanical damage to our boats’ propellers caused by submerged debris in the water. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. The repairs may take several days.

As soon as a shipyard has the availability to perform repairs, we will return to regular service. We will share schedule updates as the boats are repaired.

West Seattle service will be reduced by two runs in the morning and evening. Midday service will continue to operate to and from West Seattle. One run will operate in the morning and evening to and from Vashon.

We have a followup question out to ask which other boats are going into repairs and which will be left to run the reduced schedule.

12:45 PM: Metro says the damaged boats are the two main vessels – Doc Maynard and Sally Fox. The Spirit of Kingston is handling WT service right now and will continue while the other two get repaired.

6:19 PM: We’ve removed the previously displayed table sent by Metro; instead, here are their online updates listing what’s canceled:
–West Seattle
–Vashon Island

Concerned WS Long Time Neighbor November 27, 2022 (1:55 pm)

This is Totally Unacceptable! No one who relies on the service can depend on it! Is this a tourist boat? No, that was not what it was supposed to be! King County, (Dow Constantine) are you listening?

Anne November 27, 2022 (2:59 pm)

What’s unacceptable-debris in the water that caused propeller damage? Dow is supposed to fix that? Plenty of things to complain to County Executive about-don’t think this is one of them.
- WSB November 27, 2022 (3:00 pm)
  
  I asked about the cause of the damage after the original Tuesday Doc Maynard report and they hadn’t figured it out. Will of course be asking again.
Derek November 27, 2022 (5:01 pm)

How is Dow supposed to stop Amazon and other companies shipping massive amounts of garbage to our area? How does he stop massive pollution?
- Al King November 27, 2022 (8:44 pm)
  
  Derek. You believe Amazon is putting logs (real not fake) in the water???
Well Ya ! November 27, 2022 (6:25 pm)

Concerned WS: This is a Coast Guard issue for anything in the water, floating in or around. Not sure how you think king county is responsible for this, especially Dow.

Nw mama November 27, 2022 (2:50 pm)

The way they published this schedule is confusing. It appears there are two routes running in the am and pm this week, but the article says otherwise. I wish they’d just post all the routes running

A Local November 27, 2022 (3:47 pm)

That’s a weird but more importantly inaccurate grid.

Rider November 27, 2022 (4:48 pm)

It seems like the schedule above is saying the opposite of what it says on the advisory on the water taxi website. The advisory says that the above sailings are the ones that are canceled, while the table says those are the ones that are running?

WSB November 27, 2022 (6:17 pm)

Updating with links to the website, to reduce confusion.

bill November 27, 2022 (5:23 pm)

Concerned WS: You need to get better at sarcasm. Or do you actually expect the county to run some sort of debris-sweeping ship in front of the water taxi?

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