A small vessel that has recently taken up residence in Eagle Harbor is filling a crucial niche in the Puget Sound boating world.

Capt. Ben Doerr sails the only recreational charter boat on Bainbridge Island, a 23-foot wooden fishing skiff called “Toki.” He offers several services, including diving trips and airport shuttle services to West Seattle, but the majority of his business comes from a niche that fell vacant years ago: boat trips to Blake Island.

Argosy Cruises, a recreational cruise company based in Seattle, offered rides to the uninhabited island for almost 60 years, ferrying thousands of passengers to and from the island’s tourist attractions before closing the route in 2021.

The trip included a four-hour round trip to Blake Island and tour of “Tillicum Village,” a Northwest indigenous longhouse built for Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair.

Once one of the longest-running theatrical shows in the Northwest, the village drew almost 85,000 visitors every summer. Part dinner theater, part indigenous cultural center, visitors were greeted by employees displaying Native art, clothing and traditional ways of life.

Dinner opened with a bowl of “clam nectar,” followed by venison stew and freshly cooked salmon, roasted on cedar stakes around an Alderwood fire. After eating, masked performers would act out a story told by Klallam tribal member Roger Fernandez.

Argosy took over the entire “Tillicum Excursion” experience in 2009 with an agreement with the state park system. Despite spending $1.7 million to update the show and facility, in 2011, Argosy recorded annual attendance down to about 50,000. The company ended the programming and shuttle to Blake Island in 2021 due to pandemic-era slows in ridership.

Molly Schlobohm, chief operating officer for Argosy Cruises, announced the closure in December of 2021.

“We were really just scratching the surface on what could be offered out on the island but unfortunately, COVID-19 and the loss of revenue needed to continue operating on the island has forced us to scale back and simply focus on our core business of boat tours, charters and transportation,” Schlobohm said.

For the next three years, no other business stepped in — but demand didn’t wane. Doerr was regularly approached on BI by people asking if they could charter his boat to Blake Island. He often had to turn them down.

“I had people asking, ‘Can you just take us on your sailboat and drop us a Blake?’ And I was like, ‘No, it’s slow, and it costs me half a day. I can do it, but you have to pay this amount — and it was just too much, a few hundred bucks,” he said. “Now that I’ve got the little boat, I can run people early in the morning, or after I finished my sailing day in the evening. We started doing that, and it’s been really fun. It gets people to Blake. It’s providing a service.”

In the Northwest, boat charters are a “weird little business to be in,” Doerr added. Since the recreation season isn’t quite long enough to make a year’s living, “you kind of have to piece it all together,” he explained. That’s why Sail Bainbridge has also begun offering a shuttle service to West Seattle on Toki.

The speedboat can fit up to four passengers, and drops riders off in West Seattle from Bainbridge in about 25 minutes. From there, it’s about an 8-minute drive to the airport. So far, he’s only had a few customers, but he’s still often making the trip — his family uses the boat to get to Sounders games.