During his four decades of commercial fishing, Jim Szymanski took a liking to a style of boats he saw occasionally, built by Hansen Boat Co.
“It’s a very seaworthy hull design and very pretty. The company’s been in the business of building boats for more than 100 years. They build a very nice hull. It’s a beautiful design, at least in my eyes,” Szymanski said.
Skippers of the boats spoke highly of them. About a dozen such fiberglass vessels were built as seiners before the Everett, Wash. company discontinued the model about 30 years ago. That was bad news for Szymanski, but he was determined.
When he found out they weren’t made anymore, he learned the company still had the mold used to make them. It was sitting in a Washington state boatyard, full of weeds. Szymanski talked the company into selling it.
Six summers of work in a shop off Mud Bay Road culminated Friday when Szymanski launched Three Pearls, the first large, commercial vessel built here in at least a decade.
Szymanski took some liberties with the vessel’s design, raising the pilothouse 18 inches and locating the engine back toward the boat’s midsection. Those changes made the vessel quieter and its cabin larger, but they also had the potential to affect the way the vessel sits in the water.
After Friday’s launch at the Small Boat Harbor, Szymanski said he’s satisfied with the final result. “It’s nice. So far, so good. I’m still doing the fine tuning, but I’m very pleased.”
Work remaining includes raising the boat’s mast and getting the water and stove running.
Szymanski also added a feature lacking in most commercial vessels – a bathtub. It was a concession to his wife and sometimes deckhand, Randa. “My wife wanted a bathtub, and I figured if that’s all she wanted to let me embark on a project like this, that was a small price. But I’m taking a lot of grief about the tub.”
Szymanski learned fiberglassing years ago, but building an entire boat was an education, he said, involving research and patience and lots of time on the Internet. “After 40 years of fishing you know a little about a lot of things, but you’re not an expert at any of them. That’s probably a recipe for disaster but it’ll get you going.
“It was something that I always wanted to do – start from nothing and build a boat from scratch. It was enjoyable, but I don’t know that I’d want to do it again,” Szymanski said.
The vessel, which sleeps six, has six fish holds with a combined capacity of about 45,000 pounds. It’s powered by a 350-horsepower Isuzu engine.
Szymanski said he’ll use his “old man’s boat” for salmon and halibut fishing and hopes to fish with it during the current gillnet season.
But he deliberately put no dates on the project. “There’s no better way to ruin a boat project than to put an end date on it. I decided I was going to work on (the boat) every day, and when I’m done, I’m done. Building a boat always takes longer and costs more money than you first expect.”
Szymanski said a tricky part of the project was naming the vessel. He named his last boat Genevieve for his mother, but now, besides his wife, he has two daughters. He kept his family in the dark about his choice of name before dropping a big clue: presenting them each with a necklace containing three pearls.
“That was the most diplomatic thing to do. I scored a lot of points on that,” he said.