Curious Kalakala tale turns into fight for curios

Saturday, September 20, 2003

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF

Auctioneers have found another prospective buyer for the streamlined Kalakala, Puget Sound's vintage ferry whose bankruptcy sale has twice fallen through.

But the buyer, an unidentified Olympia man, had not yet told the James G. Murphy Inc. auction house that he'll put up the $135,000 bid sought for the 276-foot boat.


		Paul Joseph Brown / P-I
	One week after being apparently sold at auction, the ferry Kalakala still awaits its final fate.

Until he does, the old boat remains rusting at its Lake Union moorings, its future locked up in legal proceedings right down to its souvenir merchandise.

Next week could be a turning point if the Olympia man doesn't make an offer.

"The whole thing has just been kind of put on hold," said Terry Moore, spokesman for the Murphy company.

Two other buyers who bid on the boat at auction a week ago have been ruled out.

The top bidder, California businessman Charles Medlin, was ruled in default because he didn't pay the final part of his $140,000 bid.

He said yesterday that intends to pursue his claim to the boat. "I haven't dropped out."

The second-highest bidder, a group of five local investors, originally offered $135,000 but now say they'll only pay $60,000 for the boat.

They say they want to buy the boat and restore it into a waterfront attraction on Puget Sound, as Medlin says he would like to do in San Francisco. Medlin says he met the qualifications.

But others are trying to get their piece of the old boat and can't. One Kalakala enthusiast said he submitted a successful bid for part of the ferry memorabilia and that he and other bidders should be allowed to get the items, given the lack of buyers for the boat.

Bids for the memorabilia, including T-shirts, old photos, posters and pins, were taken before those submitted for the vessel, on the understanding that a successful bidder for the boat could buy the memorabilia as well by outbidding the others for the items.

Medlin did that but now he is out, as is the group of investors. The memorabilia "should be ours," complained Jack Mathews of Kirkland, who won a tentative bid for photos and a case of T-shirts.

But the auction house wouldn't take Mathews' money and wasn't letting loose of the memorabilia yesterday, preferring to wait until it gets a response from the third bidder, who'll be offered a chance to get all the memorabilia, Moore said.

The ferry plied the sound as a ferry between Seattle and Bremerton and Port Angeles and Victoria from 1935 to 1967. The streamlined superstructure was built on the hull of a former San Francisco ferry.

It was moved to Alaska and remodeled into a fish processor but was rescued from a Kodiak mudflat and brought to Seattle by sculptor Peter Bevis and a group of volunteers in 1998.

A non-profit foundation tried without success to raise money to restore it, but declared bankruptcy in March, triggering the auction.

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