The Steamship Authority’s 5:30 a.m. summer freight boat from Woods Hole to Vineyard Haven will be back for another season next year.
The ferry line’s board of governors voted 3-1 to approve the 2024 schedule Tuesday. The schedule included the early morning boat that has become a contentious issue for Falmouth.
Woods Hole residents say the rumble of trucks on the way to the ferry has disturbed the peace in the port village, and more than 110 people signed a petition in April calling for the 5:30 a.m. departure to be scrapped.
Falmouth board member Peter Jeffrey was the lone vote against the 2024 schedule.
A public hearing in early May drew several comments against the early boat, though the Steamship Authority also received letters of support from multiple Island select boards and the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.
Shippers prefer the 5:30 a.m. boat because it allows them to make Vineyard deliveries before roads and business districts become crowded with summer traffic, Steamship general manager Robert Davis told the board.
“They’re all requesting the morning shipments to get over and get back,” he said.
James Malkin, the Vineyard’s representative on the Steamship board, said he sympathized with people who were concerned about growth.
“It’s an issue on the Cape, it’s an issue on the islands [and] the Steamship Authority can’t stop that [because] the issue of growth is something that is ultimately controlled by the towns,” Mr. Malkin said.
“Should there be a time when our select board and our police people on the Island and our hospital say they don’t need the 5:30 boat, then I’d be happy to revisit my position,” he added.
Among other business at Tuesday’s meeting, held in the Tisbury emergency services building on Spring street, the board of governors learned that about $20.3 million has been spent to date on purchasing, transporting and engineering its next three freight boats.
The boat line expects to spend a further $27.7 million to refit the two of the former oilfield vessels as identical SSA freight boats, Mr. Davis said.
The first two, to be renamed M/V Aquinnah and M/V Barnstable, are in dry dock at an Alabama shipyard, where SSA director of marine operations Mark Amundsen is supervising the work in person.
A shipyard contract for the third boat, to be renamed M/V Monomoy, is not yet in place, SSA communications director Sean Driscoll told the Gazette.
Twelve feet wider than the boat line’s existing freighters, the new ferries will carry more passengers — about 350, with inside seating for nearly 100 — and an additional lane’s worth of vehicles, in about the same overall vessel length as the current fleet.
