Before it even hauled one passenger or vehicle from Anchorage to the valley and even before the vessel made it to Cook Inlet, it's area of operations, the vessel Susitna is up for sale.

The high-speed ferry that began as a prototype of a military assault transport, but was rejected by the Navy, was constructed with monies appropriated by the Senate Appropriations committee when it was chaired by Senator Stevens.

The ferry was originally envisioned to connect Port MacKenzie and Anchorage and would have turned a 2.5 hour drive into a short trip of 15 minutes. Although there are very few people employed at the Port, the ferry was a way to encourage development of the area.

The 195-foot, Traktor Jet enabled vessel is costing the Mat-Su Borough slightly under $90,000 a month to moor and insure the vessel as it sits near Ketchikan, where it was constructed.

International Brokering Services, a ship brokering service out of Australia has been contacted to broker a sale of the vessel, but a asking price has not yet been established. The Borough doesn’t expect to recover the full $80 million design and consttruction cost however.

The sale of the vessel is only in the planning stages and the Borough expects to continue searching for other alternatives to selling the high-speed ferry.

The deadline for proposals to dock or store the vessel has been extended for a short time to September 13th.

Former Borough mayor John Duffy thinks the sale of the ferry is a mistake and feels that the borough has enough funds to built at least a facilty for docking the vessel at its proposed location across the inlet. This conversation was reported by the Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer on Sunday.

Sale options, local, national, and international in scope are in the offing, but at this time, it is too early to tell and are all are purely speculation.