Lee Shore Boats owner Jay Brevik (right) stands in the small aluminum craft from which he took photos while escorting the barge on its first trip at sea.
The Port of Port Townsend crew hoisted this 43-foot barge into the boat haven Feb. 2. It will be used by the Squaxin Island Tribe to transport coho smolts in south Puget Sound.
"It's a beautiful craft," said resource technician Dave George Krise of the Squaxin Island Tribe as the Travelift approached to hoist the tribe's new barge from the shipyard to the boat haven.
With the boat at the dock, still suspended over the water, Jay Brevik, president of Lee Shore Boats Inc., stood at her bow with a bottle of champagne.
"I got the privilege of breaking the champagne bottle," said Brevik, since Krise had already ceremonially blessed it with burnt sage in the Native American tradition.
Both traditions welcomed Lee Shore Boats' first aluminum barge.
Brevik says that this project is a significant departure. Lee Shore Boats specializes in conventional mono-hulled boats. "We're very proud of the quality. Everyone is just marveling that we can build a boat like this from aluminum."
With design work by David Vohs and construction by Jim Carson and Dan Margolis, the boat has been called "a work of art." Brevik says "the way it's designed internally keeps all the structure fair and true and smooth."
"Aluminum is more forgiving in the saltwater than steel," said Will Henderson, enhancement manager of the Squaxin Island Tribe's natural resource department. Aluminum won't rust, so it will need little if any maintenance. Also it's lighter, making the boats faster and easier to transport.
With a fully equipped wheelhouse, and powered by twin 225-horsepower outboards, the 43-by-15-foot barge, when empty, should run at 25 knots.
The Squaxin Island Tribe "had seen one of our shellfish boats in south Puget Sound and were very impressed and contacted us," Brevik said.
The Port Townsend firm won the bid, and it took three months to complete.
"I'll drive this baby straight into the Sea Farm," Krise said, using the former name of South Sound Net Pens, where the barge will be used for a salmon enhancement program in tribal waters, deep in south Puget Sound.
The tribe will add two 2,200-gallon tanks, each 10 feet in diameter by 5 feet tall, to transport coho salmon from a hatchery to a net pen operation at Peale Passage, where they will be fed as smolts for four months and then released in May or June.
The goal of the fishery project is for most of the coho to make it to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into the ocean, where they will spend 14 to 16 months before returning to south Sound. There, they will be available to fishermen in the fall.
"It benefits everybody," said Henderson. The salmon will be there for "tribal fishing, subsistence fishing and commercial fishing."
The barge can also be used for shellfish propagation and harvesting as well as predator netting.
As for Lee Shore Boats, business is good. Brevik bought the shop about two years ago. Formerly Lee Shore Marine, the business has been around for 25 years.
"We offer a unique product. We're one of the last small custom aluminum shops. Most boat builders have either gone into a production mode and produce cookie-cutter boats or are attached to the government teat and are building patrol boats or homeland security boats. We build commercial fishing boats and recreational boats.
"We're growing in leaps and bounds," continued Brevik. "We're enlarging our building. We're hiring new people. We've got orders for most of 2008 already."
The boat shop's next project is a boat for an environmental firm in California, where it will be used for water sampling in the bays and estuaries.
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