The Steamship Authority board met Tuesday in Woods Hole and voted to award a contract to Elliott Bay Design of Seattle, Washington, to design and engineer a replacement vehicle/passenger ferry for the freight boat Governor at a cost of $2,049,590. It is the same firm that designed the Island Home.
“Designing this replacement ferry will be a challenge over the next year, as the boat will need to operate on all of our routes with a maximum draft of 10 feet, six inches, fully loaded with twelve 86,000 pound trucks, at a desired speed of 16 knots,” the SSA said in a management report of the meeting. “We also need to work hard to keep the project on schedule so that the replacement ferry will be in line service by the beginning of the 2016 summer season.”
In a follow-up to the November board meeting presentation of three preliminary designs for the reconstruction of the Woods Hole terminal and a stormy meeting with Woods Hole residents at a public meeting that followed, management reported it has begun to meet with small groups of residents and expects to report back in two months with “a consensus solution that will both improve our operations at the Woods Hole terminal and address the community’s concerns as best as we can.”
