Bainbridge Island ferry from Seattle
— the skyline going small in the wake.
Not only on a wall.
“The 4:40 leaves Colman Dock with the lights coming on in the towers. From the bow on the upper deck, Seattle pulls away in a long quiet arc: the Space Needle holding above the city, the cranes at Harbor Island, Mount Rainier sometimes on the south horizon if the cloud lifts. The crossing is thirty-five minutes across Elliott Bay to Eagle Harbor. Halfway across, Seattle falls behind and Bainbridge comes up, the bluffs, the green roof of Wing Point, the small white houses above the water.
Bainbridge Island ferry from Seattle, on ceramic.
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The place, in three passes.
The Seattle-Bainbridge route is operated by Washington State Ferries, the largest passenger-and-vehicle ferry system in the United States. Boats run between Colman Dock at Pier 52 on the downtown Seattle waterfront and Eagle Harbor on the southeast corner of Bainbridge Island, 8.6 miles across Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. The crossing takes about thirty-five minutes one way. The route was established in 1923 by the Puget Sound Navigation Company under Captain Alexander Peabody and absorbed into the state system in 1951 when Washington took over the private ferry operators. It is one of the busiest runs in the WSF network and a daily commute for thousands of islanders.
The crossing runs west across Elliott Bay, then through the open water of Puget Sound proper south of West Point. The shipping channel here serves the Port of Seattle's container terminals and Naval Base Kitsap to the south, so ferries occasionally hold for inbound bulk carriers and Navy traffic. On clear afternoons Mount Rainier rises 14,411 feet to the south-southeast and the Olympic Range fills the western horizon behind Bainbridge. Bald eagles and harbor seals are routine. The Jumbo Mark II-class M/V Tacoma and M/V Wenatchee currently work the route, each carrying up to about 2,500 passengers and 202 vehicles.
Sailings run every fifty to seventy minutes from before 5 a.m. to about 1 a.m., seven days a week. Walk-on passengers and bicyclists pay one-way only westbound from Seattle and ride free eastbound from Bainbridge; cars pay round-trip from Seattle. There are no reservations on this route; vehicles queue first-come, first-served at the Seattle holding lanes off Alaskan Way. The upper sun deck on the Jumbo Mark IIs runs the full width of the boat. The galley serves coffee, the long-standing tomato soup and grilled cheese, and there is an indoor lounge for the winter crossings.