Kam
Voyager
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Post by Kam on May 5, 2010 6:39:37 GMT -8
Good thing thats a nice sandy beach and not a big pile of rocks she's on..
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Post by northwesterner on May 5, 2010 8:06:00 GMT -8
This has got to be the first time anyone's seen her hull in about twenty years.
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chief
Chief Steward
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Post by chief on May 5, 2010 16:40:40 GMT -8
Look closely at the bottom of Oly. Her rudder and shaft are protected. She was designed to survive these skirmishes with the bottom.
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lifc
Voyager
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Post by lifc on May 5, 2010 21:22:46 GMT -8
Just how hard would it be to put that kind of prop and rudder treatment on the new ones? Sure it would cost some more, but, would be paid for the first time one goes aground and has to go to the yard.
I wonder when the owners are going to attempt to pull it off the beach. One thing I forgot to mention in previous posts is that when gravel of this type get's submerged, it will "liquify" when moving weight is forced upon the gravel. Therefore it will sort of dig its way out as it is pulled.
I also wonder what condition the boat was really in when it was surplussed.
Jim
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lifc
Voyager
Posts: 471
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Post by lifc on May 16, 2010 7:32:12 GMT -8
Is she still on the beach? With the current low tides, she'd really be out of the watter.
Jim
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Post by Low Light Mike on May 16, 2010 18:06:55 GMT -8
Courtesy of Mr. Paul Kemna, (who I believe lives on Ketron) the Oly is back afloat. Wow, thanks Paul, for doing your salvage work to refloat the Olympic. Did you push it back into the water, or pull it back in? How heavy was it? ;D ;D ;D
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lifc
Voyager
Posts: 471
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Post by lifc on May 16, 2010 18:48:29 GMT -8
Nice to see her up on an even keel again.
Does anyone know what shape she is in?
Jim
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Post by EGfleet on May 17, 2010 4:07:32 GMT -8
Courtesy of Mr. Paul Kemna, (who I believe lives on Ketron) the Oly is back afloat. Wow, thanks Paul, for doing your salvage work to refloat the Olympic. Did you push it back into the water, or pull it back in? How heavy was it? ;D ;D ;D Boy, can you tell I had a migraine when I wrote that? The photo is courtesy of Mr. Kemna. Although he might have pushed the Oly back into the water--he didn't say. ;D
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Post by Barnacle on May 17, 2010 13:58:56 GMT -8
Nice to see her up on an even keel again. Does anyone know what shape she is in? Jim I don't see any evidence that she is any the worse for wear as a result of her beaching... she is in reasonably good shape but a very expensive boat to overhaul--asbestos removal, for starts.
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Post by SS San Mateo on May 19, 2010 16:36:33 GMT -8
I found this blog entry that shows the Olympic under tow. There's a rumor that she will be converted to a floating resuaurant. Edit: a comment in this blog entry indicates that she sprang a serious leak and nearly sank.
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Post by EGfleet on May 30, 2010 8:22:32 GMT -8
Here's an article on the Holy Oly giving some details of the move: www.pnwlocalnews.com/kitsap/bir/news/95067904.htmlHistoric Ferry Taken off Bainbridge IslandBy NAT LEVY Bainbridge Island Review Reporter May 27 2010, 4:29 PM · UPDATED An icon of the Washington State Ferry system’s stay on Bainbridge Island ended this month. The MV Olympic, a one-engine, 600-passenger, 50-car ferry put in operation in 1954, was towed out of Eagle Harbor after a 13-year residency in there. Since the historic vessel left the island, it has hit rough seas. Towed south down the Sound by its new owner, the boat ran aground on Ketron Island, and the incident is now being investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Natural Resources. The boat was taken south to Ketron Island on May 3 by new owner Tom Palmer, a resident of nearby Steilacoom. Palmer did not return phone calls requesting comment. After only a few days on Ketron Island, the boat broke loose during a windstorm and ran aground on a nearby beach. When Palmer towed the vessel to Ketron Island he tied it to his waterfront property and the adjacent Pierce County ferry dock, which the municipality immediately objected to, said Gloria Van Spanckeren of Pierce County Public Works. Van Spanckeren said one of the vessel’s moorings broke, causing the ship to run aground. “When the tide was out, the Olympic was resting on the beach; when the tide came in it refloated,” she said. Since then, the U.S. Coast Guard and the state Department of Natural Resources have investigated the vessel to see if its repeated drifting on and off shore has caused damage to the small island’s shoreline. The agencies determined that the boat needed to be inspected by the owner, refloated and then anchored away from the beach. “After that, the Olympic remained pretty much where it was, i.e., it was not moved away from the beach and anchored as indicated,” Van Spanckeren said. DNR was already looking at defaulting Palmer’s lease on a marina he owned on Ketron. When he took over the property from the previous owner he had a set of conditions to meet, which didn’t happen, said Wynnae Wright, DNR land manager. The ferry itself has no bearing on Palmer’s situation, but the way it was moored does. “The manner in which it’s moored was an immediate threat to safety,” Wright said. “The structures he’s using to tie the ferry to were never built to hold anything that big.” The vessel entered retirement in the mid 1990s, after more than 40 years as a centerpiece of the WSF fleet. The Olympic was purchased in 1997 by Bainbridge resident Darrell McNabb for an auction price of $71,000. McNabb intended to renovate the vessel and turn it into an attraction. Those efforts were unsuccessful, and McNabb tried to sell the boat. “I was never able to generate enough income on it to pay for the restoration,” McNabb said. Several years ago, McNabb donated the vessel to the Pacific Maritime Foundation so it could be auctioned off, but the Olympic remained in Eagle Harbor. The vessel was listed on the online auction Web site eBay last summer and the Web site for the foundation for approximately $200,000. When contacted about the vessel, a representative from Pacific Maritime Foundation said: “Thank you for interest, but we no longer own the boat,” and then ended the conversation. The Olympic remains prominently featured on the foundation’s Web site. In the years since its retirement, the old vessel has gathered rust and taken on some water. Even before being sold to McNabb, the boat sat idle for more than four years. It had an outdated engine and a heavy concentration of asbestos that made it unworthy of repair. But despite the boat’s issues and McNabb’s difficulty turning it into an income-generator, he still holds the aging vessel dear. “We enjoyed having it there; we enjoyed all the fun of it,” he said. “It’s a wonderful piece of equipment, and the only real ferry that looks like a ferry in the Puget Sound.”
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FNS
Voyager
The Empire Builder train of yesteryear in HO scale
Posts: 4,948
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Post by FNS on Jul 17, 2010 0:11:47 GMT -8
Google Earth has updated photos of Puget Sound. The OLYMPIC is no longer shown in Eagle Harbor. She is, however, shown in GE's recent photo at her new location. OLYMPIC at Ketron. A close up view of her. Her galley end is to the right. Ketron Island as a whole. The OLYMPIC and CHRISTINE ANDERSON on the same image. The distance between Ketron's terminal and Steilacoom's terminal is seen on this photo.
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FNS
Voyager
The Empire Builder train of yesteryear in HO scale
Posts: 4,948
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Post by FNS on Aug 4, 2010 8:11:41 GMT -8
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chief
Chief Steward
Posts: 117
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Post by chief on Aug 4, 2010 8:37:50 GMT -8
That engine blew so much oil by the rings that the engineers would set the airbox on fire intentionally to reduce the carbon accumulations in the uptakes. They waited until after dark and often were reported as being on fire. Perhaps they forgot to burn it out this time or maybe this was one of the incidents which triggered the planned maintenance fires.
I wonder how many of it's engineers were killed by asbestosis over the years.
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Post by lmtengs on Aug 4, 2010 11:33:44 GMT -8
It doesn't sound like they did much of an investigation... not too good on WSF's part. Interesting stories though! Thanks muchly
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Post by Barnacle on Aug 4, 2010 13:41:20 GMT -8
What was to investigate? It was considered a routine 'quirk' of the boat, a known factor if you will.
It wouldn't fly these days, of course.
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FNS
Voyager
The Empire Builder train of yesteryear in HO scale
Posts: 4,948
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Post by FNS on Aug 7, 2010 18:57:54 GMT -8
Well, I've dug up some more historic Whidbey news on the good old MV OLYMPIC. This time, we rewind our clocks back to 1967. The OLYMPIC landed at Columbia Beach in spectacular fashion on Tuesday, July 25, 1967. At that time, there was only one service slip there as the new north slip had not been built yet. I'll let you read the rest of this story... The aftermath...
Now, we advance to January of 1968 and a bit of a miscue for the RHODY. She bent a rudder on the 13th of that month. This pressed the old CHETZEMOKA into regular service (from being an extra ferry) alongside the OLYMPIC. As you can see, the author of this story was off by many years on the second to the last paragraph. This story wasn't proofread prior to printing as you can see on the first sentence.
Now, to some heavenly news regarding the OLYMPIC and RHODODENDRON. A church divided a couple of groups into ferry names. This was in March of 1967.
One last bit of historic news regarding the OLYMPIC and her days at Mukilteo before I close this posting. On the July 4th weekend of 1968, the ferries carried 18322 cars on the Columbia Beach run. That was 3700 more than the previous year. The KEHLOKEN was added to the run as a fourth ferry on the Sunday and the 4th. The OLYMPIC and RHODODENDRON were the regulars with the CHETZY assisting during that time frame. That was two Wooden-Electrics and two former Maryland ferries on this run then.
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Post by Electric Thunderbird on Dec 25, 2010 15:34:15 GMT -8
Is the Olympic still docked or ON Ketron Island?
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FNS
Voyager
The Empire Builder train of yesteryear in HO scale
Posts: 4,948
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Post by FNS on Dec 25, 2010 22:58:23 GMT -8
Is the Olympic still docked or ON Ketron Island? She was down there during the spring of 2010 when I went by there on the train. Take a train ride one of these days on the Portland to Seattle Amtrak line and you should see her. Ketron Island is south of Steilacoom. You can also take a Pierce County ferry to Ketron. Just ask Pierce County which trips stop there (don't get off as sailings are far between with only a few sailings to Ketron a day).
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Post by Kahloke on Dec 26, 2010 22:55:21 GMT -8
A couple of pictures I took of Olympic at Ketron Island back in June, 2010:
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Post by Barnacle on Dec 27, 2010 22:17:23 GMT -8
So... nice photos and all, but I believe there is still a question on the floor. Anybody been down that way to check?
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Post by BreannaF on Dec 28, 2010 23:48:21 GMT -8
My last time by on the train was in mid-September, and the Olympic was still docked in the same spot then. Not that it is helpful for it's current status or anything.....
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Post by dasgeneral on Jan 9, 2012 0:52:46 GMT -8
So I have two questions relating to the Olympic. Firstly, I vividly remember back in I think it was 1990/91, before the Rhody took over the Point Defiance run, the Olympic was on the run and somehow a big rig or some kind of box truck had gotten stuck in the Olympic and the crew had to put the ferry out of service for a day. Does anyone have any of the old news articles/pictures of the Olympic from that day? I was only about four or five years old at the time and my memory of it is fairly sketchy, so I might be wrong.
My second question is why was Olympic's SOLAS certification pulled about the same time that Rhody went into dry dock for her overhaul? I know that the Rhody's overhaul was overly expensive, but was it less expensive to pull the certification and put Olympic into storage? It seems like another boat like Olympic might have come in handy for the state ferry system in the last decade.
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Post by Barnacle on Jan 9, 2012 14:49:15 GMT -8
So I have two questions relating to the Olympic. Firstly, I vividly remember back in I think it was 1990/91, before the Rhody took over the Point Defiance run, the Olympic was on the run and somehow a big rig or some kind of box truck had gotten stuck in the Olympic and the crew had to put the ferry out of service for a day. Does anyone have any of the old news articles/pictures of the Olympic from that day? I was only about four or five years old at the time and my memory of it is fairly sketchy, so I might be wrong. My second question is why was Olympic's SOLAS certification pulled about the same time that Rhody went into dry dock for her overhaul? I know that the Rhody's overhaul was overly expensive, but was it less expensive to pull the certification and put Olympic into storage? It seems like another boat like Olympic might have come in handy for the state ferry system in the last decade. It's possible that an over-height rig got stuck on the OLYMPIC; her vertical clearance was only 12'6" on the car deck (possibly less). It wouldn't surprise me. I don't think the OLYMPIC ever had SOLAS certification... I certainly don't think it was ever used on the Sidney run, either. You might be confusing the SOLAS certificate (for international voyages) with her Certificate of Inspection (COI). In any case, yes. The RHODODENDRON rebuild ate up all the funding for the OLYMPIC's rehabiliation back in 1990-1992. But... given that the Rhody's capacity of 65 cars back in 1983 is down to about 48 these days, the OLYMPIC's 55 would be--at best--40 cars. Plus the one-compartment-flooding-standard hull, plus the low-slung build of of her auto deck (12'6" clearance again), plus her riveted construction... the numbers didn't add up. It wasn't worth the investment for what was then a 52-year-old boat.
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Post by SS San Mateo on Jan 9, 2012 15:21:15 GMT -8
In late 1990 (right near the end of the year), part of the sprinkler system got knocked down by a truck. I wonder if this was the same incident.
As for the certificate getting pulled (assuming it was the COI and not the SOLAS), it would've been no earlier than 1993. The Olympic was on the Pt. Defiance - Tahlequah run from June 1990 to late Spring/early Summer 1992 and (according to another post here somewhere) was on the Pt. Townsend - Keystone route for a brief period in 1993.
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