Boat for sale

I'm in Homer right now.  For the past ten years, I have spent the month of July fishing in Kachemak Bay.  It's called the Lower Cook Inlet, Salmon Purse Seine fishery.  Although seine boats are the largest commercial salmon vessels, the Lindy is only 32.5 feet long.  It's the smallest seiner I've ever seen.  It takes a crew of four, uses a skiff to stretch the 1200 foot net across they water.  Seining can be very lucrative but it usually isn't in Lower Cook Inlet.  Of about eighty permit holders, only eight to ten fish each year.  Some do well, some try to break even and some lose money due to the many expenses and lack of fish or low fish prices.  I've experienced all scenarios.

It's time to sell the Lindy with the skiff and permit.  I'm in Homer to fix a couple things and put it up for sale.  If it sells, it will go a long way to paying many of my new bills.  Even though it's being sold because of my recent illness, I have no regrets.  The month of July can now be free to do something else.  I will also be quietly saying goodbye to a culture of commercial fishermen.  They're a unique bunch.

The fishermen that I've worked along side for years are mostly friendly.  Now and then, they may show frustration by yelling at other boats or ramming a boat by "accident."  I saw one fist fight between two boat owners but they were also brothers.  Most seiners leave Homer on Monday at 6:00 a.m. and return late Friday evening.  For the most part, these boats don't have showers, the food is cooked by whoever knows how to cook on a diesel stove and the four bunks are squeezed into the bow of the vessel.  If two crewmen don't get along, they have to work through it because they're living, eating, working and sleeping together for five days at a time.

Every now and then, a boat will head back to Homer in the middle of the week.  One of two things just happened.  They may need a mechanical part like a new prop for the skiff or a new starter for the main engine or a crewman isn't working out and needs to go home.  Either way, that boat is loosing money by not fishing.

When a location is found where the fishing is hot, it's kept a secret for as long as possible.  Whenever I would cruise by another seiner and ask, "How's fishing?"  The reply was almost always, "Not very good!"  This could mean the fishing is truly not very good or it could mean it's fantastic so you should move on.  In other words, the answer is always meaningless.

I won't miss any of this.  The part I will miss is just being on the water for a month.  There is something calming and comforting about living on a boat, getting up in the night and watching a group of otters float by on their backs or watching the many bald eagles own the sky as they search for fish that swim too swallow in the bay.  It's a different world and a beautiful one.