I seem to have lost some momentum in keeping this blog refreshed. The things I feel need to be said; the tales, tall and short; the steady breeze of life seems somehow to blow my bow off the mark just enough to miss the moments when the blog needs new spark. Hopefully this post will be a little like blowing on the coals, and writing will flow again.
Last summer we were docked by a stupid mistake on my part – when I replaced the engine, I put a sub-standard nylon bushing on the prop shaft – not unreasonable, they work, there was one in town, and it was a fifth the cost of the heavy-duty bronze one I should have ordered. While installing the prop, I waited too long on the grid, and was up to my waist in incoming tide when I was trying to get it tightened. I almost was able to line up the prop nut with the hole for the cotter pin, but couldn’t quite make it. I took the easy way out, backed the nut off just a smidgen to align the hole, and away we went. For 2 summers – almost. Details are in my last post, about Pushing Boats With Ropes. In what turned out to be one of the most incredible fishing summer for Southeast Alaska, we decided to call it quits and head back to Montana for a taste of summer.
We’re still undecided about the wisdom on that call – but, summer was nice, programming work was good, and we left Alaska with an optimistic outlook. Probably could have made a bunch more fishing, but you never know. Oh well.
Before we left, we stripped off the poles and stored them at Kirk’s, took off the gurdies, stripped the old “safety” rails off, and removed all the wood cap-rails. I stripped the interior window trim and measured for new replacements. We then painted the topsides and left it all to dry, heading south.
Then the planning began. All those things you think of when out bouncing around, all the improvements and safety points you ponder when tied to the dock, they all began to churn and bubble in our thoughts. This was the year we would try to get a big chunk of it done, it just seemed right. I talked to the boys at the welding shop, and we agreed that December was most likely to be slower and they could have time to work with me on building the bait shed, raising the bow bullrails by about a foot, and adding safety rails that actually were substantial enough to stop you from falling overboard. I made plans here at home to be gone for the month, and all was set. A plan.
Late November, and along came the Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle. For commercial boat people, this is like Willie Wonka touring the Chocolate Factory – everything you ever dreamed of under one roof! From T-shirts to huge, 8-foot tall diesel engines, radars to rafts, it is all there to drool over. We headed out with a wish list, and spent 2 days walking, talking, and planning.
We stayed down by Sea-Tac airport at a hotel we like, and just hopped on the Light Rail to head up to Seattle – hop off, walk a couple of blocks, and shop some more. I love the Light Rail – something to do with missing all that nasty Seattle traffic. It has to be one of the most unfriendly towns to drive in I have ever seen. So, day 2 – we got on the train along with umpteen thousand other people, many of them quite an entertainment section just to watch. At the first stop, some lady came up from behind me, stuck her face in ours, and asked “What are YOU doing here??” Awesome! It was Val, of the Rag Doll in Sitka, one of our good friends. She and Ken live aboard a 58 foot sailboat and power troll for salmon during the season. Like us, they had the shopping bug and had come down for the show. What are the odds – we had entered the train car from different doors, and sat down back to back only one row from each other! She happened to turn around and see us, so we spent the day at the show and had a nice dinner for the evening together. Life is good.
Last summer Lovie did some research on places to stay during the winter at Sitka, and visited Fisherman’s Quay right on the waterfront next door to Murray Pacific, the marine supply store. Winter rates and availability for one of their bunkhouses in the renovated old Pyramid Fisheries building were reasonable, so we made arrangements.
If you ever want a nice place to experience Sitka, give them a look. For us, it was ideal. We were within walking distance of pretty much everything, and it was a wonderfully comfortable and well-stocked place to call home for a few weeks. Internet access was pretty good, and I was able to work the early part of my mornings at my programming job. It doesn’t get light in December until around 8:30, so things move pretty slowly that time of year. Dark comes by 3:45, and everybody is ready to call it a day fairly early. It was a nice, slow pace – quite enjoyable after the hectic rat-race that Kalispell has become. People are actually friendly in the winter – summer has it’s share of jerks, but we found winter quite amiable.
I began by working with one of the local boatwrights to install new UHMW cap-rails. UHMW is a bearing grade industrial plastic that is widely used in the marine industry for rails and other high-abuse situations. 
It is fairly forgiving to work with, and with Mike’s expertise we were able to get a really tough, nice looking rail installed. We stopped at the forward pole stays, as the raised bow project will modify things there a bit. This stuff should last – rot is not an option!
Next, I installed a new dual Racor fuel filter system. My old one was a big 900 model single filter. If it plugged while underway and needed changing, I had to shut the engine down, drain it, replace the filter, and hope that I didn’t get any air in the system that would cause the painful process of bleeding it out to get the engine started. 
With the dual system, I can simply turn a valve to isolate the bad filter, replace it, and put it back online – all without stopping the engine. This is always a concern, as fuel sources are not necessarily always as clean as you need them to be. One more thing to remove some worry!
In preparation for the raised bow, I took off the old anchor roller assembly. The old one was made of steel, and the roller had long since rusted solid. “Roller” was just an imaginary term, so there was a deep groove in the middle worn by the anchor chain. I duplicated the angle and moved it out about 8 inches further past the bow to reduce the gouging of the bow. The new one is all 1/2” aluminum and is 12 inches taller than the old one. We will be raising the bow another 12 inches with aluminum sheeting, putting a 1x2 aluminum cap rail on it, then welding a nice 1-1/4 handrail on top. It should be pretty bullet-proof, and it gives us another foot of wave deflection up front.
If you recall a couple of years ago, when we put in the new engine, we removed the old rotted plywood roof over the pit, and replaced it with a nice aluminum one. That was mounted on our original center contraption that held the gurdies. To get to the pit we had to travers a narrow piece of deck on either side for about 3 feet, while hanging on for dear life to anything we could find. That particular part of the deck tends to have a residual slippery quality, since that is where most of the fish are landed and cleaned. In a bouncy sea, this wasn’t always fun, and I always kept an eye on Lovie when she made the trip. So, part II of the overall plan came together this time. One fine (but rainy) day, I fired the Perkins up and made the trip down to the crane provided by the City of Sitka. For a nominal fee, harbor customers can rent time on this to lift things onto or off of their boats. This is the same crane we used to do my engine swap. Kirk, Connley, and Dave showed up at the right time, and I crawled into the hold and unbolted the whole mess. Kirk gently lifted it up and placed it on Dave’s big dump truck, and away it went to their shop.
The original plan was to get right to work, but the unforeseen always gets in the way; the owner of the building where their shop is made the decision to sub-lease part of their space, so a major move across a line in the middle of the shop began. My bait shed project and I were right in the middle of the hubbub, but I just kept focused and got after it. Kirk would line me out on what I should measure and cut, Connely would weld it when ready, then I would grind and polish for a couple of days. Nothing on a boat is right angles – everything must be “fair”, or pleasing to the eye when viewed against all the compound curves. Kirk has a great sense of boat style, so he was pretty picky about the lines. I was in hog heaven – no computer, just metal, cutting, grinding, polishing, fitting….
It all seemed to go slower than I thought, but I learned just how much work there really is in making a good bait shed. The following pictures show a few details as I progressed.
Another major item involved my mast. For years it has been fixed to my deck, just aft of the wheelhouse. There is no major support under it, so slowly pressure has formed a slight depression in the deck. It seemed wise to move the forces, so we constructed a “Seiner Roll”, or a roll bar that is supported on the outside hull, above the strong “Bridge timber” that spans the boat in the center. We then cut the mast off and fastened it to the roll bar, freeing up my deck and transferring the forces to a much stronger place. 
The old free-standing pole mounts were made integral with the mounting plates, greatly increasing their strength. We now can plan for the new deck structure that will involve hatches and tanks moved forward for a better center of gravity in the hold while fishing. Lots more work!
Well, other than a new refrigerator, and fixing the plugged sink-water supply line, not much else happened. I have lots more to do before fishing, but we’ve come a long way!
I’ll let this do for now – next post can cover some of the more social times and fun we had. Till then, … Fish On. No, take a break, it’s Winter!! It was 22 below Zero for the last 2 days here – Sitka was… 35 above??
Tropical Alaska.
