Her candle’s burned out, so to speak, but legends of travel aboard the M/V Taku will live on, and the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities is looking to collect stories and photos from generations of folks who worked on or traveled on board.
The new owner, Jabal Al Lawz Trading Est., of Dubai, is paying the state $171,000 for the vessel.
“They have a crew coming and will be leaving Alaska within a month,” said ADOT&PF spokeswoman Aurah Landau. Meanwhile, the agency is inviting those who have traveled on the M/V Taku to send their stories and photos to dot.ask@alaska.gov.
The 352-foot ferry, which carried tens of thousands of travelers over the decades, is currently moored in Ward Cove in Ketchikan, but ownership changed on Jan. 19, when the state agency signed papers transferring the title to Jabal Al Lawz Trading Est., a firm that buys ships from all over the world, to be sold as scrap or refurbished and sold for further use. A smaller vessel not certified for the open water, the Taku served prince Rupert and Southeast Alaska routes.
“The sale is bittersweet for Alaska,” said Capt. John Falvey, general manager of the Alaska Marine Highway System.
“The Taku is a beloved ship and it’s hard to see her go. At the same time, we’re glad to have the sale process completed and have earned a good value for the state,” he said. Now ADOT&PF wants to hear from the generations of travelers who rode on the Taku, which was constructed in 1963 and taken out of service on June 23, 2015.
That was after the Taku was determined to be in excess of state needs for ferry vessels and outside the realm of what the state can afford to maintain and operate in passenger service with available funding. According to requirements of the Federal Highway Administration, which has funded some Taku repairs and upgrades over the years, a percentage of the net receipts from the sale must be used for federally eligible purposes or projects in Alaska.
Three offers were received last September in the state’s seal bid process, including a $300,000 offer from a resident of Portland, Ore., on behalf of KeyMar LLC, whose investors planned to convert the ferry into a floating hotel. When that bidder backed out of the deal, the state set a minimum bid and offered the ferry for sale again and Jabal Al Lawz responded with what then became the new winning bid.
