The fast ferry Fairweather tests docking at the new Angoon terminal. Alaska Department of Transportation photo.
Direct ferry service between Angoon and Sitka resumes this week.
The communities lost that connection in 2006 when the small ferry LeConte changed its schedule.
Ferry chief Mike Neussl says the route will be serviced by one of the state’s two fast ferries.
“That’s made possible by the fact that the dock in Angoon was completely rebuilt and is now compatible with the fast vehicle ferry Fairweather,” he says.
Starting Thursday (May 3rd), that ferry will include an Angoon stop on its way from Juneau to Sitka. And beginning Saturday (May 5th), it will make an Angoon port call while sailing from Sitka to Juneau.
Angoon leaders asked for the Sitka connection to improve access to health-care and other services in the outer-coast community.
The Fairweather sailings run through September. They replace two weekly roundtrip LeConte runs from Juneau to Angoon. The LeConte will resume Angoon service from October through April.
Neussl says the village’s new dock can handle both ferries.
“The engineers designed it so that both the LeConte and Fairweather can operate from that dock now,” Neussl says.
“It’s a challenging technical problem because one of our ships has a ramp on the back of it that flops onto the dock and one of them doesn’t. So there has to be a ramp on the dock that goes onto the ship.”
The new dock cost $8.6 million to build.
The Juneau-to-Angoon sailing will take two and three-quarter hours. The Angoon-Sitka run will take three hours. The Sitka and Angoon port calls will only be a half-hour each.
Total Juneau-to-Sitka or Sitka-to-Juneau travel time is six and a quarter hours with the Angoon stop. It’s four and a half hours without.
The LeConte unloads vehicles at the old Angoon ferry terminal. It's since been replaced. Ed Schoenfeld photo.
