The cost of overhauling the Steamship Authority freight ferry M/V Katama, originally estimated at $1.1 million, has ballooned by more than 40 per cent after drydock workers found deteriorating structural steel deep inside the vessel.

Welcome aboard the MV Katama, the latest addition to the Steamship Authority fleet. She is now on line in Vineyard waters. And in the years ahead she will sail with us and we with her on thousands of trips to the mainland and back. The Katama, with a new, more spacious look and lines similar to the MV Auriga freight vessel, is 180 feet long, carries 149 passengers and 32 cars. She comes to the Vineyard from the more placid waters of the Gulf of Mexico where she has sailed since launch in 1981 as an oil exploration vessel.