Tenant Spotlight: Bay State Cruises
One shipyard tenant is providing a unqiue method of transportation to Bostonians and improving the quality of their lives while doing so.
Since 1965, Bay State Cruises has been providing high-quality transportation along the water. Owner Mike Glasfeld acquired the business in 1996 and has been a tenant of the shipyard for about two years now. Bay State Cruises focuses primarily on transportation, “moving from point A to point B on the water,” says Glasfeld. They also offer occasional harbor cruises in the summer, a much smaller portion of the overall business.
Bay State Cruises is perhaps best known for their high-speed ferries to Provincetown, Massachusetts. These ferries transport passengers from Boston to the tip of Cape Cod in just 90 minutes. Bay State Cruises also operates inner harbor ferry service, as well as water shuttles to Encore Casino in Everett, Massachusetts. Glasfeld estimates that they serve over half a million passengers in a single season.
Why take water transportation? For starters, there is the time saving aspect in avoiding traffic on the roads. But beyond just efficiency, Glasfeld describes a “quality of life improvement” aspect that accompanies water transportation. He recalls performing transportation work in New York City some years ago and meeting people who regularly rode the subway to work before having the option to take a ferry. “We were surprised to hear that they would have retired had they not had the option to take a ferry,” Glasfeld says. Being able to ride to work on the water made these adults decide to continue to work another 5 to 6 years since they enjoyed the commute so much more. The quality of life improvement can be “hard to describe,” says Glasfeld, but it is apparent. “Walt Disney figured it out,” he says, “you can take a bus, you can take the monorail, but guests love to take the ferry to the Magic Kingdom.”
Bay State Cruises also works with Camp Harborview in the summer to provide transportation for campers from Downtown Boston to Long Island. The camp began in 2007 to give youth in Boston an opportunity to spend their summers outside and out of "high-risk city centers." After the Long Island Bridge was closed in 2014, they needed to create a new transportation infrastructure, and Bay State Cruises began providing ferry service for the now more than 1000 campers.
The staff at Bay State Cruises is about 110 in the summer season and approximately 50 in the winter, according to Glasfeld. For decades, they have been a “word-of-mouth employer,” and have sourced their crew through referrals from existing staff. Glasfeld described his workforce as having “the greatest combination of kindness and grit that you will find in the harbor.”
For two years now, Bay State Cruises has been a tenant of Boston Harbor Shipyard & Marina. Glasfeld enjoys being in the shipyard because he appreciates being “in an environment that supports the industry.” He explains how it is not enough to just “tie up boats,” and that there is a lot of support that goes into keeping boats running. In their shipyard storage space, there are “six engines, 20 propellers, five generators,” and more, says Glasfeld. While people love to look at the pretty boats, it is “not a self-contained operation. There is so much more that goes into keeping it moving.”
Because there are not repair facilities in the harbor currently equipped to service vessels of their size, Bay State Cruises needs to travel to Fairhaven, Massachusetts for maintenance to their fleet. “In urgent situations, it is tricky to lose 11 hours of roundtrip travel,” says Glasfeld.
Looking toward the future, Glasfeld sees Bay State Cruises growing “when the opportunity is right.” He says that their priority has never been to be the “biggest” in the industry, but rather to focus on the quality of their offerings. “We only do things that make sense and when we can do it really well,” says Glasfeld. And they are “looking forward to growing with the shipyard” as new opportunities arise.
To learn more about Bay State Cruises and begin to improve your life through water transportation, please visit their website.