ATY North
Wooden hull for 42-footer; lobster boat gets jet power
In South Bristol, Maine, one sign of spring is when the railway below John's Bay Boat Co. starts hauling wooden lobster boats for their yearly sanding and painting.
All the boats that come into John's Bay were built at the boatyard and their return is almost a yearly ritual.
This year the haul-outs were delayed, thanks to the incessant rain that staked out the Maine coast for what seemed liked weeks.
The first boat in was a red-hulled 42-footer owned by Joe Billings of Stonington, Maine. The boat is only a year old and though some fishermen might put off a paint job for another year, owners of a lobster boat built at John's Bay Boat Co. generally keep up their boat's appearance better than others. That's probably because boats built at the yard have a yacht-like quality.
John's Bay Boat Co.'s owner, Peter Kass, says this is the first boat he has built for Billings, but it's Billings' third new boat. That's not bad, considering that he was only 22 when he took delivery of the 42-footer.
While Billings' boat was being painted, planking was being spiled and fastened to the ribs of another 42-footer in the Kass boatshop. It's for Ed Foye, a lobsterman in Kittery, Maine.
The 42' x 15' cedar-planked and oak-framed boat is being built with a split wheelhouse and open stern. The deck will be covered with bridge tiles. On a boat with an open stern, Kass says “bridge tiles are the way to go,” but on a boat with a closed stern where the lobster traps are slid off the wash rail, he favors a wooden, caulked deck.
When the boat is finished this fall, she will have a 600-hp Lugger for power.
John's Bay Boat Co. is known more for building new boats than rebuilding boats. But behind the boatshop, the 33-foot Merganser was getting some new ribs, a new deck and generally nudged back into shape.
Calvin Beal Jr. of Beals Island, Maine, built the wooden lobster boat in 1977 for Donny Drisko of New Harbor, Maine.
The old red-oak frames had cracked below the bilges, especially on the starboard side.
That created a kind of corner and pushed the hull out. “We worked to get that back in shape. We pulled the hull back until the seams were tight again,” Kass says, adding that the whole boat had spread out 4 inches. In mid-June, Drisko was anxious to get his boat back into the water. That's not only to set lobster traps; Drisko is an avid racer.
And in 2004 Drisko and the Merganser took the lobster boat racing class for boats over 32 feet and up to 250 hp. With a 230-hp diesel, the Merganser has crossed the finish line at 27 mph.
In Wedgeport, Nova Scotia, LeBlanc Brothers Boatbuilders is well known for building a rugged, heavy Cape Island-type boat. Their building style worked well on the traditional hulls with a deep keel, prop and rudder. But when Cape Cod, Mass., lobsterman Jeff Vallie approached LeBlanc Brothers Boatbuilders for a 36-footer with a jet drive, the weight got in the way.
This was the first water jet powered boat that the yard had built, so LeBlanc Brothers adapted the hard-chine hull for a jet drive by removing the keel. But there was still too much weight and instead of hitting close to 30 knots, the boat ran between 10 and 15 knots.
That wasn't acceptable for the owner or LeBlanc Brothers Boatbuilder. So back to the drawing board they went, and by the end of July the boatyard should have completed a second 36-footer for Vallie. Only this one will be 6,000 pounds lighter and “should be able to reach 30 knots,” says Neil LeBlanc, the boatyard's president.
The boat will be powered with a 292 HamiltonJet and a 490-hp Cummins diesel. The 36-foot hull that didn't make it carrying a jet drive has been given a standard keel. “It's ready for an engine, and we'll let it go for cost,” LeBlanc says.
While the new jet boat is being completed, LeBlanc is also building a 45' x 23' 6" conventional lobster boat for a Nova Scotia fisherman.
For power, the boat will have a 400-hp Cummins N14.
— Michael Crowley
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ATY West
New services attract boats; fast 25-footers still popular
Located near the entrance to the Inside Passage, the route that many Pacific Northwest boats travel to and from Alaska, Seaview North Boatyard in Bellingham, Wash., has been getting a lot of fishing boats in for repairs since a 150-ton Marine Travelift was installed.
Jeff Packer, operations manager at Seaview North Boatyard, says the boatyard has become “a destination for a lot of Alaska boats.” Much of the business has been wooden boats; that's not to say the yard doesn't haul steel boats. The 58-foot limit seiner St. Zita was recently in to have prop work done, but Packer says, “Wooden boats is our biggest department at this yard.”
This spring, the seiner Lauri Anne, which was built in 1947 or '48, was having her hull refastened, the seams reefed out and then caulked.
The boat also had a couple of frames sistered and 75 to 80 feet of fir planking hauled off and replaced. Packer says about 6,000 screws were used to refasten the hull.
Another limit seiner was the Voyager, built in 1969 at Tacoma Boatworks in Seattle. It was one of the last wooden boats built at that boatyard. She had her ironbark anchor guard removed so that the planking that was under the ironbark could be caulked.
In addition, a deck beam was replaced and a new fish hold was built.
The seiner Coral was in for 100 feet of planking, new deck beams and a new fir deck that was then caulked and pitched.
The Bellingham boatyard uses a lot of fir, for which Packer says he has a good source on the Olympic Peninsula of old growth fir. “We stock a lot of lumber — 9,000 board feet of fir, yellow cedar, red cedar, oak,” Packer says.
Removing bottom paint on a wooden boat is never a pleasant task, under any circumstance. Usually it's just a lot of overhead sanding and scraping. But Seaview North Boatyard farms this task out to a subcontractor that has found the secret to a fairly quick and neat job.
The tool of choice resembles a gel coat planer. It peels off the bottom paint without removing any wood, Packer says.
The job has to be timed just right, because the planer won't work on some types of wood if they are too dry. It's also important to know how sharp the planer's blades are, because a certain level of sharpness is needed so the wood won't be torn up. “But if it is timed right when the boat comes out of the water, only the paint will be removed,” Packer says.
The planer won't work on all woods. In those cases the bottom paint has to be sanded off.
The next boat due to come out of its molds at H & F Custom Boats in Bandon, Ore., is a fiberglass 25-footer for Chuck Case, a salmon troller from Fort Bragg, Calif.
Harold Montgomery, the owner of H & F Custom Boats, says that Case is retiring another boat and wanted the 25' x 9' boat because he could easily haul it on a trailer. Another reason for going with the 25-foot hull was that a number of years ago, Montgomery built a boat for a friend of Case's, and “he wanted me to duplicate that one,” Montgomery says.
The desire for a boat that can be easily put on a trailer is strong enough among boat owners that Montgomery has pretty much stopped building his 32' x 10' model, because it isn't an easy boat to tow up and down the highways.
Montgomery's hard chine, deep-V-bottom boats have always had a reputation for being fast and Case's will certainly be no exception. With a 320-hp MerCruiser diesel and a Bravo II outdrive, the boat is expected to hit 42 mph.
A fish hold will be in the middle of the boat, with a saddle tank on each side. The hold will have a capacity of about 4,000 pounds of salmon.
Accommodations in the 25-footer aren't elaborate, but there is room for bunks and a space for a small stove.
The design of Montgomery's boats hasn't changed much since the late 1960s. Then again, there hasn't been any need to make big changes, because these days fishermen favor the boat for the same reasons they always have: “It's made to pack a lot of weight and run in crappy weather,” Montgomery says.
— Michael Crowley
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ATY South
Deadrise crabber is repaired; 1922 buy boat cited historic
The late Bobby Crockett of Tangier Island, Va., ran a marine railway and built boats on the island until his death in the late 1990s. And in Chesapeake Bay, many of his boats are still being worked.
One of those boats is the Miss Ann, a 42' x 11' Chesapeake Bay deadrise owned by crabber David Parks of Lively, Va. Parks works out of Morattico, Va., on the north side of the Rappahannock River.
In June, the Miss Ann was on the railway at Dozier's Port Urbanna Yachting Center in Urbanna, Va., getting routine maintenance and the decking around the stern replaced.
Traveling boatbuilder Alvin Sibley (see “Have truck… will build,” NF June '04, p 41) is doing the stern work. He's using pressure-treated pine for the decking and its bracing. Sibley is a lifesaver for many bay watermen who have small or big jobs that need immediate attention.
Parks was in the middle of the peeler pot season and didn't need the Miss Ann because a skiff works best in the shallow waters for soft crabs and peelers. During crab pot season, the bigger boat works better.
More and more, Chesapeake Bay crabbers are working peeler pots in late winter and spring and then shifting to crab potting in the deeper and open water.
“I work my peeler pots in a skiff but I usually move the pots on the Miss Ann,” Parks says. The larger boat holds more pots and makes the move go quicker.
The Miss Ann is a classic Crockett deadrise. In the 1970s, Crockett decided to stop being a waterman and got into boatbuilding. He learned the trade from one of the most respected builders of wooden boats on the bay, Grover Lee Owens of Deltaville, Va.
Except for Sibley's decking and framing, Parks is doing the rest of the work himself. “I've been crabbing and then coming over in the evening and working on the boat,” he says.
Parks came to Dozier's Port Urbanna Yachting Center because Sibley lives in Saluda, just five miles away. “It's hard to get someone who knows what they are doing to do a small job on a wooden boat,” Parks says. “I want to make it as convenient as I can for Alvin to do the work.”
Sibley has built 95 wooden boats between 40 feet and 58 feet and owned boatyards and boatbuilding facilities at three different locations. Lucky for bay watermen, instead of downsizing his work to skiffs as he got older, like most bay boatbuilders, Sibley continues to work on large wooden boats, like Park's; but he operates out of his truck.
Moving on down to Florida, Duckworth Steel Boats of Tarpon Springs, Fla., had expected to finish a 5-year, three-boat project for Dick Myers owner of Eastern Shore Seafood in Mappsville, Va., in April.
But Junior Duckworth, the boatyard's president, said it probably won't be until July before the 165' x 42' x 11' clam boat that Myers named the E.S.S. (Eastern Shore Seafood) Endeavor was finished.
When she is fishing in the Atlantic, the E.S.S. will work two 150-inch, 12-ton dredges and carry 160 clam cages.
For propulsion, the clammer has two 3508 Caterpillar diesel engines rated at 1,000 hp each. The Cats are bolted to Twin Disc reduction gears with a 5:1 ratio that turn five-bladed props.
Naval architect Dave Boney, president of Bay Marine of Barrington, R.I., designed all three clammers.
Duckworth Steel Boats just stated converting a 120-foot aluminum dive boat into a ferryboat for owner Paul Forsberg of Montauk, N.Y. Duckworth says the boat was being used as a dive boat in Belize and was damaged in a hurricane. The boat will be used as a ferryboat out of Long Island, N.Y.
Since last month's column, the Virginia Historic Landmarks Register of the state's historic preservation office has announced that the buy boat Elva C has been named to the state's historic register. Previously, it had only been nominated.
The late Gilbert White, a well-known Northern Neck Virginia boatbuilder, built the Elva C in 1922. It now belongs to the Reedville Fisherman's Museum in Reedville.
This is the first Virginia-built boat of its type to gain statewide recognition and is a tribute to the hundreds of boats like it that worked and traveled Chesapeake Bay waters from around 1900 until now.
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