Rough seas, canceled ferries: Family takes in stranded Port Townsend visitors

Picture it’s a sunny holiday weekend and you walk aboard one of the Washington State Ferries to stroll around historic Port Townsend for the day. It’s a little breezy, but besides a few whitecaps, you hardly notice the sailing conditions.

After a day of perusing art galleries and quaint shops, you walk back to the ferry terminal and now the wind’s picked up. The next ferry, it turns out, can’t sail because of the hard breeze and rough seas. You wait. The next ferry is canceled. So is the next — the last one for the night.

Yes, this happens sometimes in Puget Sound, where the nation’s largest ferry network sets sail — or doesn’t — at the mercy of Poseidon (or the ferry engine and staffing gods). But on Saturday, the beginning of Independence Day weekend, there was nowhere to shelter in Port Townsend. Hotels and vacation homes were booked solid.

Ten passengers who made a day trip by foot from Whidbey Island were stranded until a ferry dock worker and his family volunteered to help. William “BG” Patterson and his wife, Arianna Patterson, offered to let them crash at their house in Port Hadlock, about 10 miles south of the ferry terminal.

“We’re just happy they were off the street last night,” Arianna Patterson said on Sunday morning, shortly after BG shuttled the last group back to Port Townsend.

Around 4 p.m. Saturday, the breeze started stiffening in Port Townsend, with gusts hitting 28 mph from the west-northwest by 6:15 p.m., according to National Weather Service observations nearby.

The ferry Kennewick, the only one running the Port Townsend to Coupeville route, had to stay tied to the dock because of the conditions, according to Washington State Ferries spokesperson Suanne Pelley. The last three round trips were canceled, beginning with the 6:45 p.m. sailing from Port Townsend.

About 150 vehicles with reservations, in addition to any drive-up and walk-on passengers, were stuck on either side of Admiralty Inlet. A small group was huddled in the Port Townsend terminal.

They tried every hotel in town and every Airbnb. They tried the American Red Cross, the Sheriff’s Office and the YMCA. They even asked about camping in the ferry terminal or on the docked boat. (Both are against the rules, Pelley said.) No luck.

“We were all looking at one-another,” said Kip Goodwin, 79, who was traveling with his wife from Kauai. “Then this young man who works there walks in and says, ‘You’re all staying at my house tonight.'”

BG Patterson, 47, has worked for the ferries for a year as a terminal attendant, selling tickets, checking reservations and helping boats land, Arianna said.

“He threatened he would bring home a straggler one day,” she joked. “Then he did.”

BG called Arianna around 9 p.m., when the ferries announced that the last sailing would be canceled, and asked her if they could host a couple in their 60s. The Pattersons and their two daughters share a 1,300-square-foot house, but they’ve had foster children in the past and could squeeze in some guests.

“I said, ‘We have enough space for two, no big deal,’” Arianna, 35, said. “Then he called back and said, ‘We have eight or nine other people.’ I said, oh.”

Most of the passengers were older than 60 and traveling in groups, so she felt safe having them stay in her house, Arianna said.

One of the two bathrooms in the house was under construction, so people had to walk through the primary bedroom to use the facilities. “We basically said we don’t care if you don’t care,” she said.

From their foster days, the family had stacks of blankets they handed out, including a tortilla-patterned kids blanket that one couple grabbed.

“It was just enough to cover half their body, but they made it work,” Arianna said.

“We were all resigned to sleeping on the floor or the couch. Everybody just accepted that and we started joking about it,” Goodwin said. “I just can’t say enough about how kind they were to us strangers.”

Everybody was asleep by midnight. BG got up early Sunday and drove to the restaurant he and Arianna own, Farm’s Reach Café, where he made pastries and brewed coffee for the group.

“It was unbelievable,” said Fred Dente, 79, who lives in Langley and was visiting with his wife and their two friends from Hawaii. “It was the way humans should treat humans. In this day and age, it was exceptional.”

At 7 a.m., BG started shuttling their guests in his pickup back to the ferry terminal.

This time, the ferries set sail.