DAWSON CITY – It was a fine morning for ferry watching Wednesday.

Preparations to get the George Black into the Yukon River have been going on since before the break-up on May 1.

However, the inclement weather (snow, rain and cold) has slowed things down a bit.

Still, the launch was on the same day as last year; it's just that the ice was gone a few days earlier this year, so the wait has seemed longer.

The set-up for launching the ferry from its winter berth atop the flood dike seems, to the layperson, to be less complex than that needed for the extraction in the fall. That requires a careful arrangement of cables, block and tackle and heavier equipment.

Stated very simply, the spring operation involves overcoming the inertia that would tend to make the craft stay where it is, on level ground, stuck to the wooden beams on which it has been sitting all winter.

Once loose, it's a matter of pushing it toward the incline on the wooden rail system, then controlling its plunge toward the river as another of Newton's Laws is activated and gravity takes over.

This still requires half a dozen Cats and loaders and a sizeable work crew.

Two Cats on one side of the boat pull with cables to loosen it, while loaders with heavy wooden beams affixed vertically in place of their buckets, push from the other side.

Extra equipment moves in from time to time to balance the load.

When it reaches the tipping point, the Cats move around to the other side of the boat and the cables are adjusted so they can take up a new role as anchors to slow the slide. A final big push and then it's on its way, entering the river smoothly.

As with last year, the river is low for mid-May, and an extra shove was required to swing the boat out into the river and off the sand and mud near the shore just below the water.

It was downstream in its normal position and taking on passengers within a few hours. A lineup had already formed on the west bank by that time.

West Dawsonites lost the use of the ice bridge earlier than usual this year and have been champing at the bit to be able to stock up on supplies again.

The territorial highways branch advises travellers "the ferry runs 24 hours per day from approximately mid-May to mid-September. 

"Mid-September to mid-October, it runs 12 hours per day.  The average ferry crossing is six to seven minutes, with variations between morning and night traffic flow.”

As a rule, it moves back and forth about every 15 minutes.

West Dawson and Sunnydale are currently the only destination for ferry passengers.

The Klondike Visitors Association put out a notice on Tuesday that the border at Little Gold on the Top of the World Highway won't likely be open before Saturday due to the presence of "six to eight foot” drifts on the highway that will need to be cleared away.