THE ALEUTIAN SPIRIT leaves the big Commander Building of Platypus Marine Inc. on the Port Angeles waterfront this week with quite a nose job — a bulbous bow.
A bulbous bow is a protruding bulb at the front of a ship or boat just below the waterline.
More about it later on.
Aleutian Spirit is a 58-foot Delta fishing boat that hails from Petersburg, Alaska. She has been stowed in the Commander Building at the corner of Marine Drive and Cedar Street for the past couple of weeks.
Capt. Charlie Crane, Platypus’ director of sales and marketing, said the vessel — which fishes salmon in Alaska and squid in Southern California — is getting a bulbous bow installed.
Verne Braghettia and his crew in the fiberglass department will have the fuel-saving bow in place early this week and the vessel will be moved out of the building and into the yard.
Personnel are waiting for the delivery of custom doors for the wheelhouse that are being fashioned by Diamond Sea Glaze in Langley, B.C.
On the day after Christmas, Platypus Marine called in a handful of personnel to haul out Perseverance to lay her up in the Commander Building.
She, like Aleutian Spirit, is a 58-foot Delta having a replacement bulbous bow installed.
The owner is awaiting a surveyor’s assessment of the damage caused to the existing bulb that Platypus attached in November 2010.
It was damaged recently when the commercial fishing vessel ran into a rock in Lisianski Inlet, Alaska. The bulbous bow virtually exploded.
Fortunately for the boat and those on board, the bulb acted as a collision bulkhead and saved the boat from sinking.
Capt. Charlie said once the insurance company gives the owner the green light to make repairs, the old bow will be ground off and the new one — already fabricated — will be attached.
A bulbous bow is the torpedo-like protuberance which has a positive affect on how water flows around the hull of a vessel when it is under way.
It helps to reduce drag, which increases speed and range.
Additionally, water flowing over the bulb depresses the vessel’s bow and keeps it trimmed, which allows the engines to be more efficient. This efficiency gives fuel savings of up to 15 percent.
Bulbous bows are often seen on large ships, including the empty oil tankers that anchor in Port Angeles Harbor en route to Alaska for more crude.
Until the past decade or so, it was uncommon to see bulbous bows on recreational vessels and commercial fishing boats.
These craft have wider speed ranges, and most of them are designed to plane over the water at speeds greater than those of a ship.
The rising cost of marine fuels was the impetus for Platypus Marine to develop a bulbous bow for use by commercial vessels, and the one that will be attached to Perseverance will be the 19th Platypus has installed since the company developed its first one in April 2007.
The bulbous bow was first developed in the early 1900s — then known as a bulbous forefoot.
As the years ticked by the concept slowly gained support.
The modern bulbous bow was developed at the University of Tokyo during the 1950s and 1960s based on findings by scientists that ships fitted with a bulbous forefoot exhibited substantially lower drag.
Experimentation and refinement slowly improved the geometry of bulbous bows, but they were not widely used until computer modeling techniques enabled researchers at the University of British Columbia to increase their performance to a practical level in the 1980s.
Some photos of bulbous bows being manufactured at Platypus can be found at http://tinyurl.com/
pdnbulbous.
Picking up a classic
Bob Montgomery of Port Angeles visited Victoria recently, and while there took a stroll through the Inner Harbour.
At Fisherman’s Wharf, he came upon a commercial fishing boat, Canadian Spirit, that was for sale.
After chatting with the owner, Bob decided to buy the boat and the vessel is now moored at the end of M/N float in Port Angeles Boat Haven, in easy view of his other boat, Lillian S.
Canadian Spirit was built in 1940 by J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. of Tacoma and was launched as California Bear.
She was built for the Balesteri family of Monterey, Calif., who used her as a sardine seiner in those waters until May 1942,
That was when she was requisitioned by the federal War Shipping Administration and used to patrol the West Coast for the duration of World War II.
After the end of the war, the Balesteris reacquired the boat in May 1946 and resumed fishing off the coast of Monterey until they sold her to an Alaskan fisherman in Juneau in early 1949 who changed the boat’s name to Ocean Cape.
Six months later, Ocean Cape again changed hands and was operated out of Ketchikan until she was sold to a Canadian fisherman in 1955.
The boat was subsequently named Canadian Spirit and worked in the Canadian salmon fisheries until the late 1990s.
The last decade or so, the boat has been languishing, Bob said, so he bought her because of her history and heritage.
He is currently working to have the vessel redocumented in the U.S.
He has yet to settle on a name but is leaning toward California Bear.
Yuletide bunkers
Christmas Day was busy for Tesoro Petroleum.
The Port Angeles Harbor company refueled Rea, a Maltese cargo ship that is 620 feet long and due in Manila on Jan. 15.
Tesoro also bunkered Mount Fisher, the 21st and final log ship that came to Port Angeles in 2011 for a cargo of logs for the Asian market.
Tesoro wrapped up the day providing bunkers to the Panamanian-flagged petroleum products carrier, High Enterprise, that is 590 feet long with a 105-foot beam.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the waterfront.
Items 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.
