Ferry Commuters - thought you would like this...

[InBetweenDays]

Here is an email my sister forwarded on to me that I thought you would enjoy. She didn't take the photos. Glad I wasn't on that ferry!

On Thursday October 18th Western Washington was hit with a 50+ MPH wind storm. Here are pictures of the event.

After work I made my way down to the Mukilteo Lighthouse Park where I witness the Mukilteo to Clinton ferry taking a pounding.

These Issaquah 130 Class ferries are over 300 feet long and 78 feet wide and weight in at 2477 tons (4,954,000 lbs.) unloaded ...

I'll start with some Rock & Roll.

During storms like this, the crew plots a course which puts the ferry in the least vulnerable position, but at some point they have to change course, and when they did Puget Sound made up for lost time.
After this run the ferry system stopped running at full capacity and ran 1/2 empty for the rest of the night. Note that there are no longer cars visible in the last shot. I'm sure they were washed into the cars behind them. Each shot was taken 0.3 seconds apart hand held at 320 mm's.

[Deleted]

Oh my gosh. This is nuts!

[niq]

jesus H christ. I had no idea it could get so choppy!

[ilovebed]

Omg that is insane! The water doesn't get that choppy for the Seattle/ bainbridge. Or maybe it did that day and I just didn't hear about it.

[dana86]

talk about an afternoon wake up.

[fiddles]

I wonder how much damage to cars there was.

[InBetweenDays]

Ha! I was just googling about this looking for other images of ferries in rough water. Looks like this actually occurred in 2007.

[llh0211]

Whoa! That's crazy!

[toratoratori]

I want to go on this ride plz.

[mkate710]

Oh that looks miserable. I hate when the ferries are choppy. That's just insane.

[WOT?*]

I've done the Vashon run in really, really choppy weather and the Clinton/Mukilteo weather as well. I still remember one particular Vashon run back in the early 90s when we were heading out to visit the XH's mom. The boat was not just pitching, it was rolling. I was using sea-legs and my Navy XH actually fell on one pitch when he lost his footing.

I do remember the '07 storm. We moved back here a year earlier. XH and the kids live in Oak Harbor. I did NOT go see them and drop off kid via ferry, for obvious reasons. The Kid (DS2) stayed with me a couple extra days.