NOW THAT WE’RE all settled in for winter, it is a good time to dispense with some of the pesky minutiae of life.
Beginning this year, all mariners younger than 35 are required to hold a boater education card to legally operate a power-driven vessel with an engine that is 15 horsepower or more.
The North Olympic Sail and Power Squadron, or NOSPS, is offering a course that satisfies the state’s requirement for obtaining a Washington Boater Education Card.
Beginning this coming Saturday and concluding the following day, NOSPS is presenting America’s Boating Course.
The classroom program is ideal for recreational mariners who operate personal watercraft, the family boat, fishermen operating outboard utility boats, and paddlers of canoes and kayaks.
A full range of topics will be covered, including the basics of boating safety, seamanship issues and the minimum safety equipment required for your specific vessel.
The cost of the course, which will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day in the recreation room of the Rainbow’s End RV Park, 261831 U.S. Highway 101 in Sequim, is $35.
For more information or to register, call Bill Atkinson at 360-457-1215.
NOSPS is also holding a one-day seminar Jan. 22 starting at 10 a.m. on the selection, function, operation and display interpretation of marine radar.
The seminar will be held at the Sequim Bay Yacht Club at John Wayne Marina in Sequim.
For further information, contact Richard Michels at 360-670-5418.
Fish processing
The opening of pollock season in Alaska is Jan. 20, so water-watchers are seeing a number of fish processing ships heading to the Bering Sea in support of the largest single-species food-fish fishery in the world (boy, that’s a mouthful)!
On Thursday afternoon, they saw Arctic Storm, a 314-foot stern trawler, heading west through the Strait of Juan de Fuca starting her way north to Alaska.
The day before, another stern trawler, American No. 1, was in Port Angeles Harbor for a brief stay.
The 143-foot fish processing ship was headed for the Bering Sea when she developed a mechanical issue.
According to a company spokesperson, the vessel returned to Pier 91 in Seattle late in the afternoon, took on the needed repair parts overnight and was back under way Thursday morning.
Yacht sale
This week, Westport Shipyard sold one of its Westport 112-foot yachts to an unnamed East Coast buyer.
The boat, Pepper XIII, is an upgrade for the owners from a 107-foot Mangusta from which they transferred the name.
The new yacht, which sleeps eight people in four luxury suites, is operated with a five-member crew and was built in Hoquiam.
Initially the yacht was going to be put aboard a yacht transport ship in Victoria and taken to Florida.
However, the ship will not be stopping in Victoria, so a crew from there will take Pepper XIII down the West Coast and through the Panama Canal to her new East Coast home.
Westport also planned to put a 130-foot Tri-Deck yacht moored at its slip in the Port Angeles Boat Haven onto the same transport ship for delivery to Florida in time for the Miami Boat Show on Feb. 17.
One of the backup plans is to have a crew take the boat to Florida, which, according to Katie Wakefield of Westport Shipyard, would take three to four weeks.
A third option being considered is to run the yacht down to Ensenada, Mexico, and put her aboard a ship to complete the journey to Miami.
Topside repair
Washington Marine Repair, the topside repair facility at the foot of Cedar Street in Port Angeles, is working on the Alaskan Navigator as she rides her hook — that’s her anchors — in the harbor.
According to Chandra “Hollywood” McGoff at Washington Marine, 10 personnel comprised of welders and mechanics were onboard for a couple of days making repairs to the exhaust stack.
Across the driveway, two Delta 58s that just finished crabbing were stowed in the Commander Building on Marine Drive by Platypus Marine.
Obsession is in for a couple of days to have her keel worked on, and Defiant is about done with repairs to her sonar tube.
Log exports
In 2010, the Port of Port Angeles was visited by eight log ships that were loaded with a total of about 19 million board feet of logs bound for the Asian market.
This year is already off to a quick start and should see a similar number of vessels.
Last weekend, Luzon Strait came into port and moored to the T-Pier to take on more than 2 million board feet of logs before moving on to Tacoma to round out her load.
Next Tuesday, when most of us will be sawing our own logs, Darling River, a 590-foot log ship will moor to the T-Pier for a load of over 2 million board feet of logs as well.
She will then depart about Jan. 20 and be immediately replaced by Sun Ruby, a 580-foot log ship making a return visit to Port Angeles.
Before the year is out, there will be at least eight logs ships that will make port for more than 24 million board feet of logs.
________
David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the waterfront.
Items involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome.
E-mail dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
His column, On the Waterfront, appears every Sunday.
