The warm morning sun beat down on Mike McCorkle, a tanned, seasoned commercial fisherman who on Wednesday carefully brushed varnish on the deck of his 36-foot boat docked in the Santa Barbara Harbor.

Stranded was more like it, since 75-year-old McCorkle hasn’t been able to catch halibut, sea cucumbers or anything else in his trawl net for nearly two weeks because of the latest winter storm.

Sand has clogged the harbor entrance since then, and a delay in dredging — which was supposed to be complete by now — has left McCorkle and other local fishermen with large vessels stuck and struggling financially, most likely until early next week.The warm morning sun beat down on Mike McCorkle, a tanned, seasoned commercial fisherman who on Wednesday carefully brushed varnish on the deck of his 36-foot boat docked in the Santa Barbara Harbor.

That’s why on Wednesday, when McCorkle should’ve been out on open ocean, he uncertainly puttered around the white and yellow-striped "Pieface" — a boat name he inherited but can’t change for fear of bad luck.

“We just had about 10 days of beautiful weather, and we can’t go out,” McCorkle lamented. “There was a chance there to make some money. That was a bigger than normal storm. It kind of stirs everything up. The channel got narrower, narrower and narrower.”

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