The month of May found me in Juneau, Alaska on a 5 week non stop rebuilding marathon on the FV Whale Bird. Whale Bird is a 1928 double ended salmon troller built in Seattle. My son Thatcher purchased her last spring and rigged her for hand trolling. Though she clearly needed some work, he was able to patch her together and he had a successful season. He knew full well that, come this spring '07, she would need a new work deck. Ah, if old boats just needed new decks. A peek under the fish hold ceiling revealed several rotten frames. So oak was put on the barge along with some fir decking material to be shipped up from Seattle.

It can be rainy in Juneau in May, and cold too. I never really did get used to it. Rain or shine we worked. The tarpping became quite elaborate with success depending on how hard the wind was blowing. Off came the plywood deck: rotten. Out came the deck framing, also rotten. Deck shelf: mmmmm, let's reenforce it. Every other ceiling board was taken out to have access to the frame bays. The boat had been sistered at some point. Stacked up strips were nailed together. No glue was used. Not good. These old trollers are ballasted down with concrete in the bilge, poured in over planking and frames. The obvious question was: Are the frames any good below the concrete line? Fasteners seemed to hold well. Some say it's the lime in the concrete; others say the fish gurry keeps the frames from rotting. I was just happy we didn't have to jack hammer all the concrete out, rather, just enough to overlap a couple of planks with the new frames. A little more survey revealed she had never been refastened. Wow, galvanized boat nails are good but some of those removed were as thin as wire. The cotton was pretty black. We reefed all seams below the water line. Thatcher did say she leaked a lot.

We bent in 24 new 2x2 frames. Green oak was not available so we soaked dry oak in the channel for 2 days and steamed them for 2 hours in our cobbled together steam box. It worked like a charm. We needed to brace the hull so as not to drive the planks off. We high graded lumber yard fir for deck framing. 2000 galvanized screws were shipped from Maine for refastening. Alaska is a long way from Maine and we waited. 5 pieces of plank were replaced. We recaulked below the water line. Puttied old fastenings holes and new. After much debate, we used the local treatment for the seams: spray paint the cotton and fill seams with portland cement. I think this evolved from going up on the grid where speed between tides is essential. Also boats mostly stay in the water year round to avoid freezing so not much plank drying occurs. Some bottom paint spread and deck covering boards fastened down and I needed to leave. Thatcher finished the deck, deck box, new ceiling, bin boards, and a thousand other things. He made the July King opening. We are thinking of replacing the stern post next spring.