Peter Webster is heading back to Hawaii aboard his 80-foot tuna longliner, Itasca, after a refit in San Diego. “Just a shave and a haircut,” he says. “Clean the bottom, paint, new zincs, the basics; changed a couple of seals on the engine. Luckily, we didn’t have to do any shaft work, so that saved us some time and money.”
Powered by a 480-horsepower Cummins 855 Big Cam, with a Twin Disc MG520 turning a 5-inch shaft and a 62-inch propeller at 6.11:1, the Itasca cruises at 6.5 knots. “It usually takes 13 or 14 days to get across,” says Webster. “This time it took a little longer because we had to work around some weather. On the way back, we’ll start fishing once we get past the halfway point.”
Webster adds that he has a bait freezer in his fish hold and that he filled with 7.5 tons of frozen sardines before he left San Diego.
He and his crew of six spend about 300 days a year at sea, and their accommodations are simple. “We have two cabins, one for the crew and one for the captain,” he says. “Those and the galley are all on deck level. Down forward is a workshop.”
After buying the boat in 2019, Webster had the Itasca hauled and converted it from an albacore troller to a longliner. “It was built in 1987 at Rodriguez Shipbuilding in Bayou La Batre, Ala. I talked to [Joey Rodriguez, who runs the shipyard] when I bought the boat. I added some steel on the bottom. The last owner changed the name from the original, Miss Jacqueline V, to Itasca. It’s a combination of Latin words and means source or headwaters. I never changed it.”
Webster notes that the Itasca is 90 feet long overall, 80 feet at the waterline. It has a 25-foot beam and draws anywhere from 9 to 12 feet.
“I put a BUUS ice machine aboard, and we have a freshwater maker,” he says. “I have everything mounted, and when I get the plumbing installed, it’ll make four tons of ice a day. I’m still buying ice for now.”
To power the water and ice makers, the hydraulics, and the rest of the boat, Webster has a 60-kilowatt Cummins 4BT genset and a 65-kilowatt John Deere 4045. “I can run the hydraulics from the either the Cummins or the John Deere. It also has a small 8-kilowatt Cummins 34B, and that’s what we’re running right now.”
The main items on deck are the 40- by 80-inch Lindgren-Pitman longline reel holding up to 60 miles of 3.6-millimeter monofilament and the Lindgren-Pitman line shooter. Webster takes the Itasca out sometimes as far as 900 miles and returns after 14 days to sell his catch fresh in Honolulu.
Every fishing day, he and his crew will set about 40 miles of longline with the shooter pulling it off the reel faster than the boat is going and putting slack in the line. The crew snaps on a hook about every 7 seconds, spacing them around 120 feet apart. “They’re 5mm hooks baited with a sardine,” Webster says. “The deepest will be at about 120 fathoms, and then we put floats every 1/3 mile. By noon or 1 p.m. we finish, clean up the boat, and get ready for the evening’s work hauling back.”
Webster says that it takes around five hours to set the gear, and no less than 10 hours to haul it back. “We like to see about a ton of fish a day,” he says.
The cycle in longlining can seem endless. “It’s the captain’s job to make sure everyone gets enough rest,” says Webster. “We take turns sleeping.”
As the American poet T.S. Eliot once wrote of fishermen, “We have to think of them as forever baiting, setting and hauling” — and that is life on the Itasca.
Name: Itasca
Home Port: Honolulu
Registered Port: Portand, Ore.
Owner: Itasca Fishing LLC
Builder: Rodriguez Shipbuilding
Hull Material: Steel
Year built: 1987
Fishery: Tuna Longline
Length: 90 feet overall, 80 feet at waterline
Beam: 25 feet
Draft: 11 feet, 9-inches
Engine: Cummins 855 Big Cam
Gensets: 8kW Cummins 34B, 60kW Cummins 4BT, 65kW John Deere 4045
Power Train: Twin Disc MG520 @ 6.11:1 turning a 5-inch shaft and 62-inch, 4-blade propeller.
Hydraulics: 3-phase electric motor, and off main engine
Fuel Capacity: 10,000 gallons
Water Capacity: 4,000 gallons,
Top Speed: 8 knots
Cruise: 6.5 knots
Hold capacity: 64 metric tons
Crew accommodations: 2 Staterooms, one with 6 bunks and the captain’s with 1 bunk
Electronics: Furuno radar, Furuno sonar
Deck Gear: Lindgren Pitman 40-inch by 80-inch longline reel and Lindgren Pitman line shooter
