MV Chelan
Auto/passenger ferries operated by Washington State
The MV Chelan is an Issaquah-class ferry operated by Washington State Ferries, completed and in service in 1981. In 2004, the vessel was refit with a second vehicle deck, and in 2005 was refit with safety equipment to meet the requirements of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), allowing the Chelan to make international trips on the Anacortes–San Juan Islands–Sidney, British Columbia route. As of April 2020 the Chelan is the only vessel in the Washington State Ferries fleet that meets SOLAS standards. As of 2026, that SOLAS certificate has expired.
History
The Chelan was built in 1981, as an Issaquah-class ferry, for service on the Edmonds–Kingston ferry route. In the early 1990s, ridership on the Edmonds–Kingston route had grown to the extent that the Chelan could not handle capacity, and she was replaced on this route by a second Super-class ferry.
The Chelan was kept in reserve to serve as a replacement ferry. On many of the routes she would serve, she would replace an Issaquah-class ferry that had been refit with a second vehicle deck, and the Chelan would cause service disruptions by carrying fewer vehicles.
In 2004, she was refit, much like her sister ships to include a second vehicle deck along the outer bulkheads.
After changes in United States Coast Guard rules for international travel, the Chelan was upgraded in 2005 safety equipment to meet the requirements of the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS).
“MV Chelan” enters the record as auto/passenger ferries operated by Washington State. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chelan, Auto and passenger can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6719381. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2004, 2005 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “MV Chelan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.