Steamship Authority's New Freight Boat, The M/V Monomoy, Makes Maiden Voyage To Nantucket
Jason Graziadei •
The Steamship Authority’s new freight boat, the M/V Monomoy, made its maiden voyage to Nantucket last Friday.
The Monomoy is the third new freight vessel the Steamship Authority has added to the fleet over the past two years. The new boats were former offshore supply vessels working in the Gulf Coast oil industry before they were acquired by the Steamship and converted at a cost of $30 million per vessel.
“The M/V Monomoy entering service is an important milestone for the Steamship Authority’s four-year project to modernize its fleet with the purchase of these three vessels,” said SSA general manager Alex Kryska. “Having three like-new vessels with an identical design provides significant operational upgrades for our operation, including the interchangeability of spare parts and commonalities in crew training. They will provide reliable, efficient service to our customers and the islands for decades to come.”
After arriving in Nantucket Harbor on Friday, however, the new vessel immediately hit a snag. Shortly after the M/V Monomoy docked at Steamboat Wharf, the Steamship Authority announced that two of its remaining trips were canceled due to a mechanical issue. While it was able to return to Hyannis with a load of vehicles on Friday, the vessel's morning trips on Saturday were also canceled.
"There is a mechanical issue that’s being fixed overnight and wouldn’t stop it from running but it’s also a matter of crew hours because the timing of the vessel swap in Hyannis was longer than expected," Steamship Authority communications director Sean Driscoll said.
The M/V Monomoy is one of three sister ships purchased by the Steamship Authority in 2022 from Hornbeck Offshore Services of Covington, Louisiana. The vessel, along with the M/V Barnstable and M/V Aquinnah, was converted for use by the Steamship Authority at the Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama. The purchase and conversion costs were offset by an agreement with the Cape Cod Regional Transit Authority that yielded $28.1 million in federal funding. The M/V Barnstable and M/V Aquinnah were previously commissioned in 2024 and 2025, respectively.
The Barnstable and the Aquinnah have already posed issues for the Steamship since they were commissioned, including challenges in loading and unloading, slower operating speeds than anticipated, greater fuel consumption, and, in the case of the Barnstable, mysterious damage to its propellers.
In a recent interview with the Current, new Steamship general manager Alex Kryska addressed those challenges with the new freight boats.
"They add extra capacity, so they are bigger than some of the boats we have now, which is great," Kryska said. "There's always a challenge when you bring on new boats in terms of getting the mechanics working right, getting the engineering working right. I think that's probably true for 99 percent of any boat that gets built, there's gonna be an issue... It's unfortunate that these things happen. Alaska State ferry, for example, bought two brand new boats, and they operated them for a few years, and realized these don't fit for our service. So they basically dumped them on the open market, which is a shame. And so what I'm trying to get at is, basically, there are challenges, and the loading and unloading, it takes skill. These boats are tough. Even our regular boats are, the Sankaty, the Governor, the Island Home, how you line up the trucks, how you line up the cars. It's an art, it's a serious art that our terminal managers and our crews have. And, yeah, it took awhile to learn. I think they're figuring it out now, and they're getting pretty used to it. So they turn those boats around fairly quickly. They're not the fastest boats in the world. That's true. We are maintaining schedule. We are getting there. The Monomoy should be a little bit faster than the other ones, but we'll see. I know that we've got a lot of flack for them. They're burning more fuel because we have more generators. We have more equipment on board the boat, so that they operate better. We have multiple bow thrusters, or bow and stern thrusters, on board. We have three generators that operate, so they are safer boats. But unfortunately, they do burn a little bit more fuel. But I think overall, at the outset, just with the extra capacity, I think it overweights it.
"In the grand scheme of things, $30 million per boat is not a bad deal," Kryska added. "Considering that a brand new Woods Hole, at this day and age, probably costs $60 million plus, and they take three or four years to build. And we managed to get these in a fairly short amount of time, and they'll be good, serviceable boats for the next 10 or 15 years before we get around to replacing them."
During the M/V Monomoy conversion project, the vessel was bisected and its midbody removed to reduce its overall length to 245 feet. The vessel is outfitted with two Caterpillar engines, each rated at 2,000 horsepower; two controllable pitch propellers; and three 950 horsepower thrusters to allow for greater maneuverability. The vessel also boasts state-of-the-art radar, communications, and navigation systems, two marine evacuation systems and a rescue boat, and an interior passenger area with seating for approximately 80 passengers. The vessel can carry the equivalent of approximately 50 automobiles per trip.
The vessel’s name was chosen as part of a 2022 naming contest that generated more than 8,000 entries. Laura Wulfson of Boston was selected as the winner of a $250 Steamship Authority gift card for being one of the individuals who submitted the M/V Monomoy as a suggestion in the contest.
The M/V Monomoy departed Alabama Shipyard on January 5, 2026. The vessel made fueling stops in Tampa, Florida, Port Everglades, Florida, and Morehead City, North Carolina, before arriving at the Authority’s Fairhaven Vessel Maintenance Facility on January 19, 2026. The vessel remained berthed there for its final outfitting and U.S. Coast Guard inspections until departing at 8 a.m. last Friday to enter service.