Emerald Isle

Vessel

Dates

1997

Operator

Beaver Island Boat Company

Home port

Saint James Harbor

Eras

Modern era

Concepts

transportationmaritimecommunitytourism

Within

Beaver Island

Summary

The Emerald Isle is the motor ferry running between Charlevoix and Saint James Harbor for the Beaver Island Boat Company, and the largest vessel ever put on the route. She was designed by Timothy Graul Marine Design of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, built in 1997 by Washburn & Doughty at East Boothbay, Maine, and floated on 6 June 1997. She made her first trip into Charlevoix’s Pine River Channel through a snow squall in the winter of 1997–98 and was dedicated at her home port on 23 May 1998. She is the second vessel of the name on this run: the first Emerald Isle carried the island’s mail and passengers from 1955 to 1962.

Current operation

She remains the Boat Company’s principal vessel as of August 2026, running alongside the Beaver Islander. The operator gives her as 130 feet long and 39 feet in beam, drawing 8.5 feet, with a top speed of 14.5 knots and capacity for a semi-truck.¹ Two of the operator’s own pages give her passenger maximum as 294 and as 298; both are recorded and neither is preferred.

Construction and delivery

The building contract was held up into 1996 by what the Beaver Beacon called a technicality, with the ferry still expected to operate the following year.² The Boat Company’s crew visited the yard over the weekend of 9 March 1997, driving a motor home from Charlevoix to Boothbay; by May the builder reported welding virtually complete.³⁴

She was floated on Friday 6 June 1997. The Beacon’s account is exact about the moment: at high tide the shipyard foreman shouted “Cut 1!”, then “Cut 2!”, and the torches cut her loose from her restraints — with, the paper adds by way of correction, a 1,600 horsepower tug also involved.⁵ Delivery then slipped through the autumn, delayed by heavy weather and what the Beacon called “the kind of ‘glitches’ to be expected on the maiden voyage of a new boat of its size.”⁶

The maiden voyage

The first trip into Charlevoix carried 190 islanders and their friends up the Pine River Channel through a wicked snow squall. Crowds lined the channel; a cheer went up as she passed under the bridge; Captain Kevin McDonough answered it with the ship’s Kahlenberg horns, and Charlevoix’s fire engines played water cannons over her.⁷

The US-31 bridge at Charlevoix raised for the Beaver Island ferry, 15 July 2011. The clip does not name the hull.

The home-port dedication followed on Saturday 23 May 1998 at the Boat Company dock, with the christening given by Mary “Bert” McDonough, tours of the vessel, and lunch at Holy Cross Hall. Demand was such that seats on the day’s trips were allocated by invitation and then by public lottery.⁸

Names

She carries the name of the ferry she is often taken to replace directly, but does not: the first Emerald Isle left the run in 1962, thirty-five years before this vessel was built, and the Beaver Islander carried the route between them. A search of the record for “Emerald Isle” therefore returns two vessels a generation apart, and dates rather than names are what separate them.

Evidence and limits

The construction and delivery are well covered because the island’s own paper followed the build month by month. The vessel’s specifications are the operator’s, not an independent measurement, and the operator’s pages disagree with themselves on passenger capacity. No official number, tonnage, or registry document has been consulted here, and nothing in the held newspaper run postdates 2014.

Added 14 August 2026. Recent changes