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Her belongs remained imperiled into the night Tuesday as salvage crews assessed damage and tried to keep the ferry stuck on the reef where it became grounded Monday. Officials remained unsure what caused the grounding, though the U.S. Coast Guard ruled out mechanical failure.

Reynoldson and her two sons are relocating to Sitka, and they felt lucky to have been able to complete so much of their packing in their first shipment on the ferry.

"It had my parents' China, a dresser that I got when my grandfather passed away, all of my crystal, all of my photographs and all of the negatives were on that boat. All of my artwork. ... Pretty much anything that's anything to me is on that boat, besides my kids," Reynoldson said.

She spent Monday and Tuesday on the phone with state officials trying to get someone to unload some of her possessions from her truck.

Meanwhile, crews working to salvage the LeConte learned Tuesday morning that what they thought was only one 30-foot gash in the ship's steel hull turned out to be two parallel gashes mirroring each other on each side of the ferry.

Officials spent Tuesday analyzing the state of the boat, keeping it secure on the reef and forming a plan to save it. The cars on the ferry cannot be moved until the holes have been patched.

"If that ship came off the reef right now it would sink like a brick," said Nona Wilson, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Transportation. "We have to be sure that if we're rolling cars around, the boat is secure."

A salvage barge, which will carry all the tools and a work space for repairing the ferry, is scheduled to arrive at the scene from Seattle on Friday. Repair will not begin until the barge arrives, Wilson said.

As a precautionary measure, the recovery team plans to drain the ferry of its 23,604 gallons of fuel this afternoon. They'll also boom the ship - surround it with buoys that will contain any spilled oil, Wilson said.

The salvage effort, which ferry and Coast Guard officials call a "unified command," is conducted by the Alaska Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

"As far as the Coast Guard is concerned you have a commercial vessel that needs to have an investigation for why it went aground," said Coast Guard Lt. Dan Buchsbaum.

The National Transportation and Safety Board joined the investigation Tuesday, Buchsbaum said. Interviews with crew members from the LeConte began Tuesday night.

The ferry had not suffered any mechanical or navigational difficulties before landing on the reef, Buchsbaum said. Tides and weather also were not a factor in the wreck.

The ship had taken what looked to be a fairly common shortcut used by similarly sized vessels in that area, Buchsbaum said. But the area was narrow, and the margin of error for navigation was thin. The vessel was close to the shore when it hit the reef, Buchsbaum said.

About 40 people are on the scene of the wreck, and two boats were headed to the area Tuesday evening to provide food and a resting area for the salvage crew, Wilson said.

The ferry system hoped to relieve the crew members, many of whom had been working since Sunday evening, by Tuesday night.

The cost of the recovery effort will be borne mostly by the Alaska Marine Highway System, although the Coast Guard and the ADEC are assisting. None of the agencies has made a cost estimate for the salvage.

Once the holes are repaired, the 15 cars will either be off-loaded to a barge while the ferry still sits on the reef, or the ferry will be towed to Sitka and cars off-loaded there.