the tusty finally gets replaced

And that old boat has been sailing our waters since the sixties.

For decades, one aging state ferry has been the only ride linking Kodiak and the small towns strung out along the island chain out west. We call her the Tusty, and at sixty-two years old, she's the oldest big ferry still sailing in our fleet. This week, the state finally picked a builder to give her a replacement.

The winning bid came in at nearly three hundred fifty million dollars, from a shipyard down in Louisiana called Thoma-Sea. They've been building ships for more than thirty-five years, and they recently finished a research boat that's already working in Alaska waters. So this isn't some outfit that's never seen the north.

Here's why it lands so hard for those island families. That ferry isn't a nice-to-have out there, it's how people get their groceries, make it to doctor visits, and move their trucks. When your town has no road out, the boat is the road.

And this has been a long haul. The new ferry was first floated back in 2021, then went out for bids with zero takers, and only found a builder after going back out this year. If it all clears, her replacement is set to be sailing by 2029.