W
hen Rob Saunders first saw the Ocean Fury, she wasn’t a pretty sight.
Moored at the very far end of a dock on Lake Union in Washington State, the 110-foot-long ship looked more like something to avoid than something to covet.
“It was covered in bird droppings,” he said. “It was all over it. You could smell it for a block.”
However, a closer inspection showed this ugliness was nothing a good wash couldn’t fix.
“I stuck my hand on the side and I realized this is all brand new steel,” he said.
The one-time crab boat, he said, had been widened to 40 feet about eight years ago as the owners began a refit to make the ship into an offshore longliner. However, a changing economy in the United States put those plans on permanent hold.
When he realized the actual condition of the unsightly hulk, Saunders, the CEO of Island Scallops, realized it was exactly what he needed.
“We were looking for a barge with tanks, and this one has four large, refrigerated seawater tanks, and the price was right,” he said. “Right now, what we are doing is setting it up to store floats and nets. The Provider will provide us with all the equipment we need.”
The move makes economic sense, he said, because Island Scallops goes through about eight containers of nets in four to six months, which means a lot of shuttling back and forth to the plant. With the nets stored on-site in Fanny Bay, Saunders said he hopes to be able to increase production.
He had been planning to tow the Scallop Provider to Fanny Bay on Tuesday, but thick fog made that impossible. However, he said it will shortly be on site.
• A rogue wave off the north coast of Vancouver Island is being blamed for severe damage to the 186-metre cargo ship Dry Beam.
The ship had been transporting raw logs to Japan from Washington State when the 15-metre wave hit Thursday night some 480 kilomtres off northern Vancouver Island, smashing support beams, sending some logs over the side and shifting the rest dangerously towards the starboard side of the vessel.
Escorted by a Coast Guard The Dry Beam limped into Ogden Point in Victoria on Sunday, with none of the 23 crew members injured.
• The second in the Schooner Cove Yacht Club’s Hot Rum series of races on Jan. 29 saw more competitors able to finish.
Unlike the Jan. 15 contest, which saw only four of the nine boats able to finish or even start the race, seven of the nine boats entered completed the entire course. Only Rambunctious and Dash did not start. Both of these boats also didn’t start in the first race either.
Taking top spot this time was Flight, moving up from third place and knocking former first place finisher Shingebiss into second spot.
Island Fling, which didn’t finish the first contest, took third place. Amazing Grace, which finished second last time, was relegated to fourth spot, while Silent Motion dropped one place to fifth and Maxim and Trinity, which didn’t finish the first time, took sixth and seventh respectively.
