It’s around 6 a.m. and the Hollister III sits in the Connecticut River. The ramp is lowered to the dock at Rocky Hill as the barge prepares for its first river crossing of the day to Glastonbury.
It’s a crisp spring morning, hazy with smoke from Canadian wildfires smudging the sun that hangs in the sky above the treeline across the river.
It’s a Wednesday, which means Captains Blaise Clemente and Chris Egan are conducting their weekly safety inspections. Clemente hops off the Hollister onto the Cumberland, the attached tug that pulls and pushes the three-car barge. He heads below deck, fires up the engine and declares it in good working order.
Meanwhile, Egan inspects the barge.
“Just checking to make sure the bilge alarms are working and there’s no water,” Egan says, his words echoing from below deck. “But everything looks good.”
First mate Johnnie Fountain hops aboard with coffee – “Johnnie makes the best cup of coffee there is,” Clemente says by way of introduction – and gets to work on several rope lines.
“So Johnnie’s gonna take that bow line and put it on that stern line, then we flip the tug, then we head out,” Clemente says.
“It’s a four-minute ride,” the captain says. “We’re gonna go; we’re gonna take a little bit of an extra ride this morning. There’s nobody on the other side and I want to get the engine running.”
And with that, we’re cruising across the Connecticut River.
This ferry line is historic – it’s the oldest continuously operating ferry in the U.S., running since 1655, according to the state of Connecticut. In its original form, it was just a raft propelled by poles. In the 1700s, it was upgraded to a small boat powered by a horse on a treadmill, before switching to steam power in the 1800s.
Today, it’s a modern, diesel-powered tug-and-barge. Depending on the weather and the river levels, it runs every year from April 1 to Nov. 30, seven days a week, with the lone exception of Thanksgiving Day. Over those months each year, thousands of people catch a ride.
A stress-free river ride to work
Standing in the master cabin behind the wheel, Clemente reflects on his journey to ferry life. He owned a stock brokerage firm in Boston, but ended up in Connecticut when he and his wife split and brought their kids to Southington. After the divorce, he decided to make a career change. He’s now been aboard the ferry for the last 18 years.
“Always been on the water,” Clemente says. “First boat when I was 7. Did a lot of lobstering out of Swampscott [Massachusetts.] I went to every boat, every port, in the state of Connecticut, and came across the ferries.”
Many aboard the ferry are tourists, but a good deal are regulars who use the boat to get to work, like Mark Packard.
Packard lives a few hundred yards from the dock at Glastonbury and rides the ferry as part of his commute to his job at Eversource. He’s been taking it a long time, and his family’s been taking it for centuries – the barge Hollister III is named for his family, the Hollisters, who ran the ferry starting around the Revolutionary War.
“My mother learned to swim off the back of this boat. My grandfather tied a rope around her and threw her off the back of the boat. I don’t even know how old she was. But that’s her story and I’m sticking to it,” Packard says, laughing.
Other commuters feel passionately about their river ride to work.
Ryan Crafa rolls onto the barge on the Glastonbury side in his pickup truck, en route to his construction job in Rocky Hill.
“‘Cause going that way towards the Putnam Bridge is nothing but traffic in the morning, and it saves you that kind of getting aggravated when you’re driving in all the traffic,” Crafa says. “It kind of starts the day better and ends the day better.”
Passenger Jon Brink, who helps run a staffing agency in Rocky Hill, agrees.
“Who wants to sit in traffic and race 80 miles an hour down 91 or 84 when you can ride, whatever, 15 knots across the Connecticut River?” Brink says. “Look at the birds, look at the sunrise. It’s fantastic.
“It sets your mood up for a powerful, engaging mood, I’d say.”
Working on the ferry: A ‘dream job’
Brink, Crafa and Packard all say they consider the crew friends. They see each other every day, asking about each others’ kids and vacations.
The crew members are equally enamored of the ferry and its riders, especially Fountain, the first mate. He says he spent 15 years working highway maintenance at the state Department of Transportation, waiting for a role to open aboard the ferry. When a highway colleague left for a job on the ferry, Fountain begged him to let him know when an opening came up – and the colleague followed through.
“He called and let me know it was open,” Fountain says, beaming. “I bought him a grinder.”
Fountain describes it as his “dream job.”
“It’s the best experience of your life,” Fountain says of getting to work on the ferry. “Every morning is a different morning, a different sunrise. You meet different people every morning. Just to be on the water – you can’t have a bad day on a boat. Absolutely not.”
The state considered shutting down the ferry during Gov. Dannel Malloy’s administration in the early 2010s, but it survived after pushback from riders. Crafa, the contractor, was one of them.
“I mean, why would you want to get rid of that? That’s like knocking down a historical building,” Crafa says. “It’s pretty much the same thing. You’re not going to make a lot of money but it brings joy to a lot of people, all the kids who take it over. It’s great.”
Gov. Ned Lamont’s transportation department says it’s true the ferry is subsidized, but so are other forms of transportation. A DOT spokesperson says it’s a public service for commuters and a destination for tourists, and it’s worth the investment.
Clemente says he’s grateful to Lamont and the DOT for keeping the ferry running. This year, more than 120,000 passengers rode the Glastonbury-Rocky Hill ferry and its down-river sister vessel which crosses the river between Chester and Hadlyme, according to the DOT, which operates both.
In peak summer, Clemente says people wait in lines on both sides of the river.
“You know, it’s a tribute to the ferry system that somebody would wait sometimes 30 minutes for a four-minute ride,” Clemente says. “But they love it.”
Soon, the ferry makes another stop at Rocky Hill.
Crafa gets behind the wheel of his truck and prepares to drive off the ferry – but not before saying goodbye to each member of the crew.
“Take it easy, Johnnie!” he yells, with a wave.
“All right; you, too,” Fountain yells back, working the lines. “See you tomorrow, bro!”
Crafa drives off, and, with that, the ferry turns back toward Glastonbury – to pick up the next passenger waiting to catch a ride.
