Port Townsend’s Cape Cleare salmon company is known for delivering its premium wild-caught Alaskan salmon by bicycle, and its carbon footprint continues to shrink.

In March 2013, Rick Oltman, owner of Cape Cleare Fishery, bought the 80-foot, fiberglass-hulled schooner Mystere, a sailboat built in Port Townsend in the 1980s. He renamed it Cape Cleare. Hauled out in June, it is currently being refit at Steelhead Marine in the Port Townsend Boat Haven. Oltman has sold the diesel-powered troller Cape Cleare to a Port Hadlock man, who is now using it to fish for albacore tuna off the coast.

With the sailboat, Oltman plans to troll for salmon under power, but use sail power to transit the vessel to and from Alaskan fishing grounds, and to fish for tuna under sail off the Washington coast.

“As stewards of Northwest ecology, we’re excited to be reducing our impact while fishing these waters,” said Penelope Partridge, who has been working alongside Oltman and six to eight others in the shipyard.

A 30-kilowatt Kubota generator will power a flash-freezing system for the fish. A second, smaller generator provides domestic power and can be used as a backup for the freezer system.

“The big system can freeze 3,500-4,000 pounds of fish per day,” Oltman said. Fishing for tuna, he said, “I’d bring them aboard, bleed them and put them in liquid brine to cool the fish to 10 degrees Fahrenheit very fast,” then rinse them and hand them down below to quickly bring them to -40 degrees.

Oltman is highly conscious of boat-system energy use and is a master of harnessing local skill power as well.

Randy Charrier and his son Ryan are redesigning the propulsion system, including a new reduction gear. The boat has a Gardner 6-cylinder engine that’s “about 114 horsepower” and operates from 250 to 900 rpm, Oltman said. This kind of engine was produced between 1938 and 1968, and unlike modern engines, “Once it’s started, it doesn’t require one electron to operate.” It’s all mechanical.

“I wanted the boat to be ultraquiet,” said Oltman, so they installed low-res engine mounts (springs) “that take out 95 percent of the noise,” and a custom flywheel dampener. The engine has keel coolers rather than a saltwater-pumping heat exchanger, so it can be run for a short time even when it’s hauled out of the water.

Carl Chamberlain “has been a huge asset” for his design of the shelter deck aft, Oltman said. That design removes a running backstay, allowing Oltman to fish from the stern.

Tim Hoffman at Steelhead Marine is in charge of the shelter deck’s structural steel. Oltman is renting space at Cape George Marine Works and has hired Todd Uecker to build the mold for the shelter deck lid.

Larry Grobe of Fiberglass Contracting is designing an integrated fuel tank and is in charge of glassing the new 20-ton-plus fish hold.

Grobe and his team are also restepping the 93-foot mainmast in the pilothouse atop the engine room.

Kit Africa, Pam La Nua and Kevin La Nua took apart and re-laminated the mainmast, cutting it longitudinally into quarters. Its original laminations, done with plastic resin glue, were redone with epoxy, Partridge said. The rebuild took “hundreds of hours,” Oltman said, and included new conduit and new LED lighting systems.

The mast step was raised to make room for the engine and components. Jim Franken of Tim Nolan Marine Design helped redesign an arch system to transfer the load up the keel to I-beams in the pilothouse floor. Now, the engine and hold can be accessed through a 30-inch-high, 4-foot-wide door.

Sugar Flanagan “has been very helpful in looking at how this boat was rigged,” Oltman said. “There are all these things I have to learn about. It’s the fun factor.”

The sailing rig includes a Marconi mainsail, gaff-rigged foresail, staysail and jib. The original sails “have been kept in great condition,” Partridge said, and include a fisherman and a square sail, though “we’ll probably never use it.”

There are 48 blocks on the boat they plan to replace with blocks of bronze and a laminated resin material, designed and made by Pete Langley at the Port Townsend Foundry.

“With that combination, I won’t have to do anything to these blocks” in terms of maintenance, and “they’ll hopefully be a marketable item for other boats of this size,” Oltman said.

A graduate of the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Oltman has fished for 40 years. He started the Cape Cleare business in 1996, and now sells salmon in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest. Notably, 95 percent of his fish is delivered by bicycle, hauled on custom trailers made from aluminum ladders.

“We like marketing our fish directly,” Partridge said. “It keeps our carbon footprint low, and people like to know where their food is really coming from. It builds trust in the community.”

Oltman is interested in the slow food movement and enjoys involving the community in his projects. The new boat has eight bunks and will be operated with a crew of four, Partridge said – which means there’s plenty of room for guests.

“Theoretically, this all has to be functional by next May,” Oltman said.

For more information, visit

capecleare.com.