We work with the U.S. Coast Guard to schedule vessel dry docking that meets safety requirements and minimizes impacts to our customers. Through the fall and winter schedules we sometimes have to assign a smaller vessel on some routes to allow larger vessels to go in for maintenance and repairs.

You can download the following document for detailed information about vessel status and anticipated service impacts.

Please note that these service scenarios are subject to change at any time based on dry dock availability and emerging maintenance and repair needs. Please check here frequently for updated versions of this document.

	Maintenance, Drydock, Inspection Needs and Service Impacts (pdf 110kb) posted Friday, February 1.

Emergency Service Plans

• Anacortes/San Juan Islands routes emergency service plan (pdf 80 kb)
• Vashon/Southworth routes emergency service plan (pdf 77 kb)
• Whidbey Island routes emergency service plan (pdf 78 kb)
• Bremerton emergency service plan (pdf 78 kb)
• Edmonds/Kingston emergency service plan (pdf 77 kb)
• Bainbridge Island emergency service plan (pdf 77 kb)

Washington State Ferries Vessel Maintenance and Preservation

Washington State Ferries completes more than 99 percent of its trips. This is the actual number of scheduled trips that are completed, not including weather or tidal cancelations; and includes those trips that WSF is able to complete by replacing one vessel with another.

The Life Cycle Model

To keep our service so dependable, WSF’s Vessel Maintenance and Preservation Department plans vessel maintenance and preservation work years in advance. This advanced scheduling system helps us stay ahead of problems and is the reason for WSF’s high trip completion rate.

The Life Cycle Cost Model (LCCM) involves scheduling “vital” equipment and parts for preservation according to their useful lifespan. Vessel systems are classified into two categories – “vital” or “other.” Vital parts are those designated by the U.S. Coast Guard as vital to the protection of people, the environment, and the vessel. Other parts of the vessel may be important, but not “vital” as defined by the Coast Guard.

Every piece of equipment on the vessel has its own defined life cycle, which is closely tracked and scheduled in advance to either be replaced or preserved according to each part’s life cycle schedule. By doing this in conjunction with regular vessel inspections and annual maintenance, the ferry system can allocate its resources in a way that makes sense for the entire system and keeps our operation running smoothly.