Add in the ocean and I would probably never get the stains out of my shorts.
Thinking of your statement there I clearly recall one time when my son and deckhand were out 90 miles out of Valdez about 20 miles down the outside of Montague Island for a 2 day overnight halibut fishing trip.
Or charter was a crew of 6 that went out with us usually Twice a summer. One of those two day trips resulted in a load of 2703 pounds of halibut. So we had the habit of going where the good fishing was.
Anyway the KraKaDawn was a custom built aluminum welded 35x12 certified. We built it in La Connor Washington in 1994. Twin Cat diesel at 840 hp. It was the fastest charter vessel in PWS for two years.
The trip I’m referring to we fished the first day and put the hook in inside of Patton Bay on the outside of Montague. This is a bay where you only stayed if you were confident the weather was going to remain fairly nice.
About 2 in the morning the weather started to come up. By 5 AM we were getting hammered while at anchor. Decision was made to fight our way back to the entrance of Prince William. Talon and I prepared the vessel for a rough time. Everything had to be tied down so as not to lose gear overboard. Also don’t need projectiles crashing inside or outside.
Well I had to have Talon work the windless as the moment it would pop out the vessel would be getting pushed fast as the wind at anchor was about 30 knots plus.
Took us an hour and a half to get out of Patton and round Box Point. By the time we rounded Box Talon and I well knew we had a problem. We were making about 2 maybe 2.5 knots. We had of course made our crew aware of the situation, which didn’t need any convincing that they needed to follow instructions from me or Talon instantly. We had sharp rollers coming on the Starboard forward quarter with about 4 foot of cross chop. The rollers were realistically about 12 foot. Most people that own boats would have said they were 16 foot seas. But 12 was a very rear measurement. Fortunately the rollers were of a nature that able to climb and crest and slide down the other side.
We were able to make about 6 knots to the entrance. Once we got inside the sound I headed to Deer cove and anchor up. The last 10 minutes of cruising to the Cove started getting a banging from the starboard prop and shafting. Shut the starboard drive down. Wasn’t sure what had happened.
We finally got back to Valdez late that night, slow as we were on one engine.
Upon inspecting the damage to KraKaDawn the port bow had cracked under water 14” that would open slightly when the bow would drop into the bottom of a roller. The pumps we’re keeping up ok.
The banging was the starboard strut that carries the 2” stainless shafting right in front of the prop. This strut was 1.5” by 10” that was snapped off and hanging.
Other damage was at the rear dinette table had been ripped out by guys hanging on and the front dinette in the pilot house was torn out as well and the seat at the back side of the forward dinette was crushed by big John when he came down when the vessel was coming up. Both tables ended up in the v birth.
Well I’ve got to run as I’m due at Dave’s pretty soon to check out that Savage.
There’s a little more to this story that I feel is interesting, so I’ll post more and edit this post. Just thinking about that trip has me shaking right now. I could have killed Talon.