Waiting for a ferry at Orcas Island and pondering our incompetence

ORCAS FERRY LANDING — "Island Time." It's the logo on T-shirts and hats in a market near the ferry dock. "Island Time: Orcas Island," as if there's some degree of cachet involved.

We've been sitting here, living on Island Time, waiting for a ride to Friday Harbor, for four hours. But who's counting?

About two hours after taking my place in line, in a car with Emjay and visiting friends from Colorado, the pointed questions began arriving from the back seat.

"Where is our ferry?" wondered Connor, with that impeccable logic every 5-year-old possesses.

"It's coming, buddy," said Dad, from behind the wheel. And it was coming. Just not anytime soon.

I grimaced and launched into The Explanation — the mea culpa I offer every guest who arrives in the Evergreen State and wonders why nothing seems to work around here.

"It's a long story," I always say. "We have a fascinating revenue system. Sales-tax driven, boom or bust. When it booms, we don't invest in infrastructure. When it busts, we don't invest in anything. We just close stuff down."

Exhibit A: The threadbare state ferry system, where a mechanical problem on one or, God forbid, several boats at the same time can render the entire schedule a work of fiction.

That's what happened this week, when the Barbie-sized ferry Hiyu — a proud little 42-year-old boat, but one that carries only 33 cars — replaced a broken-down 90-car vessel, the Sealth, as the "inter-island" ferry in the San Juans.

You will get no visible nor verbal warning about this switcheroo when you leave Anacortes — no indication that you'd better allow half a day to cover, say, the 5 minutes of open water between Shaw and Lopez. You'll find out soon enough.

Island Time! Just lay back and enjoy it.

When the Hiyu finally pulled away from Orcas Wednesday, well past its scheduled departure time, a ferry employee gave those of us stuck on the beach the grim news.

"We've reached our quota," she said, explaining the small-boat problem. "You can wait for the next boat [nearly four hours away, as it turned out], or you can come back tomorrow."

Tomorrow?

Someone asked her what seemed a logical question. When a run's capacity is reduced by two-thirds because of a breakdown, why can't the state just add a couple extra runs for the smaller boat? After all, we've already paid our money — more than $100 for a small car and five passengers to get from Anacortes to Friday Harbor via Orcas.

She looked at us like we were from a solar system far, far away, and sighed.

"The state," she said through a saccharin smile, "is pretty darn broke."

And there you have it. Washington: The No-We-Can't State. Broke and broken, no fix in sight.

It occurred to me at that instant that I rarely visit the San Juans anymore, and this trip reminded me why. It's just not worth it, either in terms of money or time. That ratio of three hours in ferry lines for every one hour relaxing tends to stick with you.

Who do you blame? Washington State Ferries. The governor. The Legislature. Maybe even yourself, if you've ever voted for a knee-jerk tax measure that pulls money directly away from transportation.

But it's not all about money. In a lifetime of ferry riding, I don't recall the system being a lot more efficient back before tax revolts. And what Washington State Ferries has, it doesn't use well. For the half a day we were marooned on Orcas, the ferry slip sat empty for hours. But on the two occasions when one boat actually used it, another magically appeared to wait in line behind it — in one case up to a half-hour — to slide in when it was finished.

Have these people not heard of two-way radios? The entire thing reeks of mismanagement.

And it's embarrassing.

We got in line to go to Friday Harbor before 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Got there right around 9. Big deal? Maybe not. But it's just one example of what seems an enduring trend in these parts. Believe it or not, some of us still have medium- to high expectations of our state government. And one of them is that it should not take five hours to move people from Orcas Island to Friday Harbor.

Island Time: A pleasant spin on gross incompetence.

Get used to it. And for any of you out there who think life is too short to be living it, two words of advice: Stay home.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com.