Cape Cleare Fishery
Some History!
As a teenager, I was captivated by the book "Dove” – the true story of a 16-year-old boy’s adventure sailing alone around the world. Robin Lee Graham's transformation from an inexperienced sailor to one matured by the ocean's vastness and solitude struck a chord. My interest in sailing led me to crewing aboard a few sailboats on voyages between Hawaii and the west coast, but the idea of owning my own boat seemed impossible – a dream out-of-reach.
When I was seventeen, after a lifetime of moving because of my father’s work with the US Military, my parents settled in Shelton, WA. The waterfront property they bought included access to a work dock that was shared among neighbors. That winter I watched a fisherman on the dock build a pilot house on his forty-six-foot wooden troller. Over the next nine months he converted the boat’s fish hold from ice to a freezer system. On the property next door, a neighbor was building a series of forty-foot sailboats from a plug and mold he had fabricated. He taught me how to lay up fiberglass and took me ocean-diving.
Watching those men as they worked on boats and helping out when needed, the idea of owning my own boat began to seem less far-fetched – possible even. When the fisherman invited me to join him on a trip to Alaska, I jumped at the chance. Traveling north along the Inside Passage and seeing Alaska for the first time, I knew it would not be my last. I was eighteen years old.
In 1973-74, after OPEC-declared its first “oil crisis,” American industries became concerned about rising fuel costs and over dependence on fossil fuels. Boatbuilders and fishermen alike began to consider alternatives, including the use of sails on commercial boats. In trade publications I read about Sailing Fishboats, as they were called, a concept that seemed to embrace my interests in sailing, boatbuilding and commercial fishing. I wanted to be part of that conversation and to be around people who shared my interests. The Evergreen State College seemed a good place to start.
In 1975, I took time away from my studies to crew aboard a 130-foot king crabber for a six-month stint on the Bering Sea. The boat would catch, process and freeze fish at sea - a business model I would emulate years later on my own boats. The Bering Sea trip paid for my first fishing boat - a Saint Pierre Dory, called the Julie J. At twenty-seven feet long, its cabin was the size of a phone booth - barely big enough to protect me from the elements. After an extensive refit and several fishing seasons, I needed a bigger boat. I wanted to scale up, catch more fish and make a better living.
The boats that followed may sound like a mere list of names, but to me they represent formative impressions of people, places and experiences I will never forget. There was the Marvel, a thirty-four-foot wooden troller, built in 1924. Then there was the Araby, a twenty-three-foot pocket troller I built myself and fished two seasons in Alaska. The Vagabond, a thirty-eight foot, double-ended power troller, carried me through nine seasons in Alaska.
In 1974, I enrolled in the "Marine Histories and Craft" program at Evergreen. The course offered hands-on boatbuilding skills, as well as a deeper dive into maritime history, biology, economics, and physics. We worked at H.A. Long Boat Works under the tutelage of Robert H. Perry. Our initial aim was to construct a sturdy fishing vessel that could be operated under power or sail. The first boat we built at Evergreen was only partially framed when a fire destroyed the workshop. It would take several years to restart its construction, which when completed was appropriately named The Phoenix. (That boat, since rechristened Sea Wolf, now shares the same homeport in Port Townsend as my current boat.)
My next boat was the original Cape Cleare, a forty-five-foot wooden troller, built in 1950 by Hanson Boat Works in Tacoma. In 1996, I converted it from an ice fish hold to a freezer troller. I flash froze salmon at sea and sold my own catch for seventeen years before buying the fishing schooner that I presently own.
During the 1979 season in Alaska a fish-packer pulled into Steamboat Bay where the troll fleet was based. Called Hetta, the packer was making its rounds between Ketchikan and the salmon fleets, buying fish and delivering mail and supplies. Digging through my mail, I found The Alaska Fisherman's Journal tucked between letters. Inside was an architectural drawing and story about a seventy-foot fishing sailboat. Built by Skookum Marine and designed by Ed Monk Jr., the schooner was touted as the largest molded-fiberglass hull constructed in the U.S. at the time.
Artist: Juanitta Lang
Today, in a twist of fate I could not have imagined at the time, I am the owner or rather, the indentured servant, of that boat - The Fishing Schooner Cape Cleare.
I still fish in Alaska, as I have done for more years than I can remember. Thankfully the salmon still run wild, even though I do not, and Alaska still holds the allure of the place I fell in love with more than half a century ago.
