Found on the ferry: one car, driver unknown
Loading the Ferry
Via the Flickr and by SolYoung.
One of my favorite local trips is over to Bainbridge Island, partly because I simply enjoy riding the ferry and the trip there and back is convenient fun.
As anyone who has taken a Washington State ferry any time recently can tell you, you cannot be even remotely near a ferry without hearing multiple times the warnings about not leaving your personal possessions unattended, so it always surprises me on those infrequent occasions when someone does. Usually, it’s a suitcase or a backpack or a big shopping bag that someone’s put down and walked away from without thinking about it. but last night someone left a much larger item behind on the M/V Tacoma: a car.
My ride over to Bainbridge yesterday was the M/V Wenatchee. We had totally smooth sailing until just as we were pulling into the harbor over on the Bainbridge side when the overhead speakers made that gravelly sound that indicates a message is coming. An announcement at this point in the game is usually about some delay or potential delay, and sure enough, that’s what it was. It’s just that instead of the usual minor mechanical issues or heavy water traffic causing a delay, this time it was a security issue caused by the discovery of an abandoned vehicle in the car deck of the Tacoma.
Apparently the car wasn’t much of a threat because we were still able to pull into the dock and disembark as normal. The 5:30 sailing from Bainbridge on the Tacoma had been cancelled, but the people waiting were all able to board the Wenatchee for its return trip. My return to Seattle on the 8:10 crossing was on time and perfectly fine.
This morning I glanced through the papers to see if I could find a story but there’s nothing noteworthy in “nothing happened” so there was nothing to be found. Still, I can’t help but wonder about this car. I’ve left magazines and bottles of water behind on the ferry out of carelessness and inattention, but who leaves behind a car? One of my co-workers thinks that it was someone who routinely walks on the ferry and simply forgot that they drove; another proposed the idea of someone trying to fake his or her own disappearance. What do you think? Could someone really forget something as big as a car?
I commute daily on the Bainbridge Island ferry and this is not the first time that this has occurred.
I remember one instance when a Metro Vanpool was abandoned. Driving duties are routinely shared/rotated in a vanpool and all of the riders walked off the boat thinking that some other vanpoool member would drive the van itself off the boat.
I happen to know one of the drivers of that van and apparently they got a very angry phone call from the ferry captain later that evening at home.
Hmm…I’d never considered the Vanpool idea. Maybe the car left yesterday was one that two or more people take turns driving and there was some confusion about who was supposed to get it.
I hope we find out the conclusion to this mystery! You’re right, though- who leaves a car behind?
I should talk though- I’m so used to walking home that I almost forgot and walked past my car the other day. :)
Sounds like a great way to ditch a junk car. Even if they catch you it’ll be hard to figure out which county’s jurisdiction you can be prosecuted in. For an even better case dump it on an international ferry.