Boat of the month: Channa Sea

It’s mid-April, and Quinn Phillips steers the Channa Sea north, loaded with black cod pots.

“We use coffin pots,” he says. “They’re six feet long by three feet by two feet high.”

Phillips will fish 300 pots on 50-pot long lines. It’s far less than the Channa Sea can hold. “We can only fish 300,” he says. “Five hundred when we fish Dungeness, and we can fit them all aboard and still have room.”

That was not always the case. “The boats started as the Ingot,” says Phillips. Built at Nichols Brothers in 1973, the original boat was a 56-foot schooner. It was 18 feet wide and drew 12.5 feet. But there’s not much of her left in the Channa Sea. It’s basically a new boat.

Naval architects at the Hockema Group redesigned the Ingot, turning it into the 78-foot by 32-foot Channa Sea, with a 12.5-foot draft. The Ingot, along with her John Deere 65kW genset, is encased in the new boat.

"I came to the project late,” says Phillips. “The boat had already been sponsoned and lengthened at Yaquina Boat Works, and the owners, Chad Hoefer and Anna Capri, wanted a captain to run it. I ran it for a year and then bought in with Chad and Anna.”

The new boat bears little resemblance to the original, which was a classic schooner design. The Channa Sea has a high bow, a higher pilot house, and a port side wave wall that towers above the crew on deck. “The upper part of the pilot house is all aluminum,” says Phillips. “And so is the insert in the wave wall. I love that for fishing weather, I just put the port side into it and the crew is all protected on three sides.”

According to Phillips, they wanted to keep the schooner's appearance and kept the pilot house aft, at deck level, it has a tunnel for setting the sablefish pots. “We clip them on the line as it runs out,” he says. “About 33 fathoms between them, so it’s pretty easy.”

When fishing Dungeness in Oregon and Washington, Phillips takes a four-person crew, plus himself. “I’m running at 5 knots between pots, and they come fast; you need an extra guy. For sablefish, I can run the block and steer, so I just take three.” It takes Phillips a month or so to catch his sablefish quota, and then he heads to Cordova, where he tendors pink salmon and enjoys family time. “All the kids are aboard,” he says. “It’s great. That’s how I grew up. I don’t know any other way to live.”

Thirty-one year old Quinn Phillips and his family in front of the Channa Sea. Phillips grew up on commercial fishing vessels and is passing the life onto his own children. They have child-size survival suits for when the kids are on board. “Those are hard to find,” he says. Guy Mossington photo.

Boat Specifications:

Name of Boat: Channa Sea
Home Port: Newport, Oregon
Owner: Channa Fisheries, comprised of three owners: Chad Hoefer, Anna Capri, Quinn Phillips
Builder: Nichols Brothers original sponsoned and refitted at Yaquina Boat Works Toledo, Oregon
Hull Material: Steel
Year built: Original: 1973. Sonson: 2019-2020
Fishery: Washington/California Dungeness crab, west coast sablefish, Alaska sablefish
Length: Original: 56 feet. New: 78 feet
Beam: Original: 18 feet. New: 32 feet
Draft: 12.5
Engine: Original: 640hp, Cummins KTA-19-M3.
Genset(s): Two Cummins QSB7-DM with 210kW each, and a John Deere 4045TFM75 65kW
Hydraulic: three 75hp electric motors powering three 36gpm and three 37gpm pumps with a 623-gal reservoir.
Controls: Glendinning and AP70 Simrad
Power Train: Twin Disc MG516 @ 5.05:1. 4.5-inch stainless shaft, 68”x49” 4-bladed bronze propeller
Fuel Capacity: 21,300 gallons
Top Speed: 10 knots
Cruise: 8 knots
Hold capacity: 235,000 pounds of pink salmon; 125,000 Dungeness; 180,000 sablefish
RSW: Cold Sea. A 40-ton system for the main hold, and a 20-ton system for forward hold.
Deck Equipment: For sablefish using longline pots, a Hansen 34-inch master king block with a 19-inch Warren Junes slack taker. For crab fishing single pots, a 22-inch Warren Junes block and Junes line coiler. NPCC MCKT-1240 Crane. Yaquina boat works bait chopper.
Crew accommodations: All new interior with three two-bunk staterooms and a daybed in the wheelhouse
Electronics:  Radars- Furuno FR-2115BB and Furuno Magnet VX2. Sounder Furuno FCV-1200BB. Bottom builder: Olex M4 satellite connectivity. Two Koden KCG222 GPS compasses. Communications: Icom SSB, 2 Icom IC-324 G VHF radios, MSAT-G2 satellite phone.