A FEAST OF FALL
FACES BEHIND THE FERRIES:
A Portrait
of the Eagle Harbor Maintenance Facility in five workers
Manufacturing operations are not extinct on Bainbridge, but the concept of a “working waterfront” is usually not the first idea that leaps to mind when contemplating the island.
Even longtime residents might be surprised to learn the extent of the work happening every day at Washington State Ferries’ Eagle Harbor Maintenance Facility, the command center of the nutsand-bolts necessities that keep the nation’s largest ferry system seaworthy. Bainbridge’s last working shipyard is situated between the terminal and Waypoint Park, near the heart of downtown.
When fully staffed (which, currently, it is not), the facility employs nearly 200 workers across various shifts and shops, and it falls on their shoulders to ensure Washington’s fleet of not-getting-any-younger boats stands ready and able to ensure safe and punctual passage for millions of passengers each year.
Some days are better than others.
In a February article, “WA’s farcical ferry fleet,” the Seattle Times recounted the confluence of problems facing WSF today (years of insufficient funding, mismanagement, overdue maintenance, a shortage of boats and also people to crew and maintain them), which led to rampant delays and cancellations. Given the scope of the operation and issues, it can be easy to get lost in the numbers: vessel capacity, ridership data, performance reports, etc. But the system is made of people. Lots of people. People who are are doing their best with limited resources. People like…
By Luciano Marano
Photos by David White Cohen
Scott Blymyer
Position: Electric Shop
Time on the job: 3 years
After more than 30 years working at a Boeing maintenance facility (“I didn’t tighten door plugs or anything”), Scott Blymyer, who grew up on Bainbridge, tired of his commute from Kingston and began hunting for something closer to home, but still in the field he’s loved for so long.
“[My dad] brought me to a pulp and paper mill and took me into the control room and that’s where it all came together. They opened up the back of the panel, I saw the wires and the instruments and everything, and I thought, ‘Wow! I’d love to do this!’”
He’s been doing it ever since. In addition to his technical experience, he brought to his latest gig the hard-earned insight of a true local.
“I used to commute to Everett, so I know how important those boats are, because when they don’t run, now I’m late to work,” he said. “People don’t realize how important they are until they don’t have them as conveniently. Waiting two or three hours in line is just ridiculous.”
Blymyer works in the controls department of the electric shop, calibrating, maintaining and repairing the boats’ many controls and indicators. When not busy doing his part for the ferries, he dedicates himself to projects and repairs at home.
“I’m inundated with fixing things and that’s what I love to do,” he said.
What was meant to be a short stop has become a special experience with no immediate end in sight. “I came here thinking I was just going to kind of slide into retirement in about five years, but I really enjoy working here,” Blymyer said. “It turned out to be wonderful.”
“We don’t just work on [ferries] here. We do the maintenance for every terminal. Every wire and cable you see, we’re installing and maintaining. We wear a lot of hats.”
— Rick Caldwell
Rick Caldwell
Position: Shore Maintenance
Time on the job: 5 years
The purview of the so-called “Shore Gang” is extensive and Rick Caldwell likes it that way.
“The big thing for us is vessel preservation,” he said. “If they come in here and they’ve got failed coatings, we take it down to bare metal and basically build it back up.”
Even beyond boats, the concerns of the only department at the maintenance facility that pulls its members directly from the fleet are many.
“We don’t just work on [ferries] here,” Caldwell explained. “We do the maintenance for every terminal. Every wire and cable you see, we’re installing and maintaining. We wear a lot of hats.”
An especially crucial cap sported by Caldwell, who lives in Bremerton, is that of a parent. It was the impending birth of his son and the appeal of a more stable schedule and better health insurance than his construction job could offer that lead him to seek employment with WSF more than a decade ago.
“I started at the terminals for about eight months, then I transferred over to the deck side,” he said. “It actually worked
out perfectly because my son was born prematurely. He was in the NICU for like 71 days. Before insurance the bill was over a million dollars.”
Of the many issues facing the ferries, Caldwell thinks one takes precedence. “I hate to say it, but I think we’re kind of our own worst enemy. Ridership, so much depends on that, and if we can’t be reliable? I know people who are avoiding the ferries. They’ll drive the commute because that’s consistent. We’re so short on boats that if one goes down it has a massive impact.”
Even so, Caldwell said the public is often more sympathetic than one might imagine. “Everybody seems to know somebody who either works here or in some capacity for the ferries, so the more people talk, they get a pretty good understanding,” he said.
“I think the quick, easy joke is, ‘Oh, you guys can’t keep them running.’ But it only takes 2 minutes of explaining the day-today and they’re like, ‘I get it.’”
Buddy Dupuis
Position: Electric Shop Time on the job: 2 years
Innovation and teamwork are Buddy Dupuis’ favorite parts of his job. The former U.S. Navy submariner-turned-electrician specializes in security and safety systems, including badge readers and cameras. But his latest victory was installing solar-powered lights in the facility’s formerly treacherous parking lot, since it’s
Rick Caldwell
Buddy Dupuis
located on a Superfund site and running power to the area was not possible.
“One of the things I made sure of when I was looking for products was that we had something that would not impact our neighbors,” he said. “They’re all on timers, they’re all very directed light beams. That was a big consideration for me.”
“I’m stable here,” he said. “I love the fact that I can come in here and work a solid 40 hours a week. As opposed to my previous employment, I don’t have to worry about getting shipped off to San Diego or Virginia or anywhere else.”
The average person, he said, doesn’t understand what it takes to keep the ferries afloat—and neither did he before coming to work at Eagle Harbor.
“A lot of what we do here is on the fly, trying to keep these systems live,” he explained. “We manufacture parts in-house. We manufacture things that can’t be made anywhere else. We make systems work that don’t have any support. Their end-of-life was a decade ago. Sometimes we’re working with materials or equipment that the company that made that part or that system, they’re gone now.”
But when it works, the gratification is equal to the labor. “The day-to-day interface and getting our jobs done and seeing the vessels work properly, that’s a really cool thing and really, really rewarding,” Dupuis said. “What I enjoy is the fact that I can make suggestions and they’ll actually be taken seriously.”
Seamus Courtney
Position: Weld Shop
Time on the job: Less than a year
For one of the few facility workers who lives on Bainbridge, Seamus Courtney’s decision to forgo college was something of a youthful rebellion.
“I wanted to be a diesel mechanic in high school. Both of my parents are first-time college graduates in their families and they
weren’t super thrilled about the idea of their only son not going to college,” he said. “So I compromised and [studied] mechanical engineering and it was so much harder than I expected!”
Eventually, Courtney found his way to welding during a drinking session with a childhood friend. “Everything good happens after 2 a.m.,” he laughed. “At like 2 in the morning, he fired up the welder on the back of his truck and I was like, ‘What is this thing?’ ”
From such a seemingly inauspicious start a career was born. “It’s really satisfying to see a project from start to finish and being a part of it and being considered in the modifications of the plan,” Courtney said. “It’s immediate gratification—but it’s also immediate heartbreak, too. If you really screw it up, it’s pretty easy to see.”
Seamus Courtney
The strict technical requirements of the welding trade, Courtney explained, and the associated costs and potential harm if done incorrectly, tend to encourage a certain baseline confidence. “Welding promotes an ego,” he said. “We’re the only shop where if you fail a test you’re fired, and we test regularly. No one wants to pay you to put in failed welds. No one wants to have stuff cracking or splitting.”
Courtney believes that most islanders are not overly curious about what goes on at the shipyard. “That’s the goal, though,” he added. “if we do our job right, if we’re quiet and out of the way and the ferries move as they’re supposed to. It’s good to not be known sometimes.”
In addition to the obvious issues facing the fleet, Courtney was quick to add one that is, from the outside at least, perhaps less apparent: overly complicated bureaucracy.
“A lot of these ships, they’re tired. And there are a lot of ideas about how to fix them,” he said, “and I kind of wish there were a lot less people in the kitchen.”
Rick Northon
Position: Carpentry Shop
Time on the job: About 11 years
Having ascended to the role of vessel lead in the carpentry shop several years ago, Rick Northon found his own duties changing right along with condition of the overall ferry system, including sometimes finding himself in front of a computer “It’s a different set of responsibilities,” he said. “I was a carpenter, so my background was not in computer work. So that’s my struggle. There are
