Alaska state ferry service between Ketchikan and Prince Rupert, British Columbia, resumed this week, after an almost-three-year absence from the Canadian port.

The Matanuska made a quick round trip Monday — with 83 passengers and 39 vehicles — and is scheduled for another voyage on Friday.

“Well, we’re thrilled,” Bill Urquhart, who was waiting to board the Matanuska, told the Ketchikan Daily News. “We’ve been waiting for two years to be able to do this trip again, and we were waiting for the ferries to open up. And we were waiting and waiting, and finally, the announcement came in March that we were gonna be able to start doing Rupert sailings again. … We had our reservation the first day tickets were available.”

This summer’s service is limited, with two round trips scheduled the third week of July, two in the third week of August, and one in September.

In each of those weeks, after calling on Prince Rupert, the Matanuska is scheduled to continue on its route to other Southeast ports.

The state has not released the fall/winter schedule yet.

The more than 30-month gap in service to Prince Rupert was due to a new federal requirement for armed U.S. Customs agents and the covid pandemic shutdown of Canadian waters. Canada lifted its pandemic closure to ship traffic earlier this year, and a revised U.S.-Canada agreement now allows U.S. border agents to be armed.

Prince Rupert is 90 nautical miles south of Ketchikan, about a six-hour ferry ride. It’s the last stop on Canada’s east-west Highway 16, about 900 road miles northwest of Bellingham, Washington, which is the southern end of the Alaska Marine Highway System. The ferry system operates weekly service year-round from Bellingham to Alaska.

Rupert was popular with drivers as a cheaper alternative to the longer ferry voyage from Bellingham.

“I am so excited — there’s nothing I’ve heard more about from my constituents from here in southern Southeast Alaska, other than issues related to the Alaska Marine Highway, and specifically people are more concerned about the lack of access to Prince Rupert,” Ketchikan Rep. Dan Ortiz told the Ketchikan Daily News.

Rupert was the original southern terminus of the Alaska ferries when the system started up in 1963 until the state extended its route to Puget Sound in 1967.

Prince Rupert officials in 2019 said about 14,000 travelers used the Alaska ferry terminal each year. The state has a long-term lease on the dock and terminal building, which is owned by the Prince Rupert Port Authority