Comfort is key to conversion; fiberglass seiners repowered.(part time fishing boats)(Brief Article)

A few new boats have been built recently with the creature comforts of a recreational boat for fishermen retiring from full-time commercial fishing, but who want to continue fishing part time.

Fred Dyson, a veteran Bristol Bay fisherman and now an Alaska legislator, falls into that group of fishermen retired from full-time work. Instead of building a new boat, however, he's converting his 32-foot aluminum, Marco-built gillnetter, the Dawn Trader. He bought her new in 1979 and fished her for many years. The work is being done by Dave Kindred at Heavy Weather Custom Boats in Anchorage.

"We're adding a side door to the main cabin and an after cabin over the fish hold, so it will be a fairly typical trawler style," Kindred says. "The fish bins have all come out and the hold area has been reframed. He's keeping the 260-hp Caterpillar 3208 engine for the time being, and the hydraulics to do a little oceanographic work with the boat.

"The galley and dinette will be in the after cabin, along with some bench seats that can convert into a berth. There are still V-berths in the bow, and the wheelhouse will have more comfortable and larger capacity bench seating."

The gillnet reel will be carried atop the new after cabin, which rises 3 feet above the splash rail. The reel is being rigged so it can be taken off the boat when Dyson doesn't want to fish.

Kindred is also supplying some parts for Prince William Sound seine fisherman Mike Durtchi, who is going against the conventional wisdom that says more power and speed is better. Instead of adding power, Durtchi is detuning the pair of 600-hp Daytona diesel engines in his 47-foot fiberglass seiner down to 400 hp each.

"It was built as one of those real fast, go-get-the-herring kind of boats," Kindred says. "It was all set up to be able to run at high speed with a light load or no load, but that's not suitable for what he's doing now as a salmon seiner. So everything is being retuned to make it run more efficiently at lower speeds with a load. He's doing most of the work himself in Whittier, but we've been welding some stainless exhaust components and putting some ...