Keith Benson journeyed to Port Angeles from his home on Vashon Island last weekend aboard his vintage yacht Arro.
She was hauled out of the water Monday morning and set on the hard at the Port Angeles Boat Yard, where Keith painted the hull from the gunwales to the boot stripe over a couple of days.
Arro is a 50-foot wooden yacht that was built in 1922 by Barbare Bros. of Tacoma, which shared ownership in the fantail yacht with Herbert Hoover.
The future president at the time was a major investor in the Arro Oil Refinery in Lewiston, Mont.
The yacht has a bit of her own history.
On March 20, 1933, Arro was moored at the Tacoma Yacht Club when a nearby vessel, Argosy, exploded shortly after taking on nearly 1,000 gallons of gasoline.
In addition to destroying the 54-foot Argosy and killing her owner, Dr. Edward A. Rich, the blast blew off Arro’s wheelhouse.
Keith said it was at this time that the original engine was removed and replaced with an Atlas Imperial diesel that had been previously used by the city of Auburn to generate electricity.
Later this month, Keith will make his annual trek through the Broughton Islands, B.C., where he has spent a month or more each summer since he acquired the historical Arro in 2001.
Orange life-saver
Also sitting on the hard at the Port Angeles Boat Yard is a 40-passenger lifeboat off the crude-oil tanker, Alaskan Navigator.
The international-orange-colored composite vessel, just shy of 25 feet long, was built by Norsafe, a Norwegian company with affiliates worldwide that service the lifeboats.
In this instance, I understand the boat’s drive line is being refurbished and that when the Alaskan Navigator returns to Port Angeles in the near future, the lifeboat will be hoisted back aboard ship and cradled in her davit.
Space-age visitor
A couple of weeks ago, a long-haul trucking company brought a boat to the Port Angeles Boat Yard from the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, NASA’s largest rocket-engine test facility.
The boat was 38 feet long, and I was told by the truck driver that it was a retrieval boat used to pick up pieces and parts after a rocket launch.
Personnel worked on the boat for a few days, installing what appeared to be some pretty sophisticated sonar equipment.
The technicians were very closed-mouth about their task as well as specifics concerning the equipment they were installing.
The boat was put back into the water at the beginning of last week, and I understand she is up in “northern waters” — wherever that may be — doing what I couldn’t guess.
Custom-made in PA
Platypus Marine Inc., the Port Angeles-based, full-service shipyard, yacht-repair facility and steel-boat manufacturer, recently launched Adamant, a 58-foot limit seiner that the company custom-built for a longtime customer.
The boat took about a year to build and is an excellent example of a well-crafted steel vessel that was built in its entirety in Port Angeles.
Platypus on Monday hauled out Eliza Joye, a tuna troller that hails from Nanaimo, B.C.
The 44-foot fiberglass boat, built in 1979 by Philbrooks Boatyard in Sidney, B.C., will be used to troll for albacore from now until October in waters about 130 miles due west of Port Angeles.
John Jenkins of Sooke, B.C., owns the boat and is an adherent to the notion that positive ions will attract fish to his vessel.
In fact he is such a staunch believer in this practice that in the past, he had two aluminum plates — each about 2½ feet or 3 feet square — embedded into the bottom of his boat.
He also had two plates embedded into the keel, one of which was made of aluminum and the other of copper.
John and I have spoken about this concept, and he told me that all boats are surrounded by an electrical field — an aura so to speak.
This electrical aura emits either positive or negative ions which attract or repel fish, respectively.
John said the embedded plates in concert with the zincs and aluminum anodes that are strategically placed on the bottom of the boat create a “happy place” of positive ions that attract tuna to the boat’s wake as she trolls through the water at about 5 knots.
I’ve done some research on the subject, and there does seem to be some support for the theory, but I don’t think it borders on the scientific.
Apparently the practice is also catching on with recreational fisherman.
I saw a little black box that is available which attaches to a downrigger. The operator then selects the amount of positive ions to be emitted depending upon the species of fish being sought for dinner.
While Eliza Joye was out of the water, personnel painted the bottom and installed a new set of zincs.
I also understand that John polished the props with a special concoction that is designed to further enhance the emitting of positive ions.
John wrapped up our past conversation by saying that regardless of the state of the science, the plates work for him and they will always be on any fishing boat he owns.
Work at tank farm
Tesoro Petroleum won’t be loading any barges from its Ediz Hook tank farm for the next three to four weeks.
Haskell Construction of Bellingham is in the beginning stages of a project to replace the pipes that run from the tank farm under Ediz Hook Road and the waterside dock to the barge terminal.
Scaffolding is set up beneath the dock to provide workman access to the pipes, which are being cleaned through an intricate and impressive process.
All the pipes were back-flushed into their source tanks by air pressure last week to clear them of any remaining oil.
Gravity will cause any residual product that was left in the pipes to drip into a kettle that is incorporated into the sump that is part of each pipeline.
Pressure-heated steam will then be pumped into the pipes to rid them of any oil clinging to their surfaces, and this, too, will drain into the kettles.
The kettles, which range from 10 to 40 gallons depending upon the size of the pipe they are coupled with, will then be cleaned out by Emerald Services of Seattle.
Emerald then will recycle the oily waste.
Once the pipes have been cleaned, they will be removed and disposed of as scrap steel by the contractor, and the process of installing new pipes will begin.
That should take the better part of two weeks.
In the interim, Tesoro’s Seattle barges are bunkering ships anchored in Port Angeles Harbor.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the area waterfronts.
Items and questions involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome. Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
His column, On the Waterfront, appears every Sunday.
