There’s an empty slip in the small boat harbor that Terry Jacobson can’t help but feel a little sentimental about. The slip housed his 46-foot power barge “Arcturus” for more than two decades. Last September he sold it.
“Just yesterday I was looking down at that empty slip,” Jacobson said this week.
Named for the brightest star in the northern hemisphere, Arcturus is the “star of gladness,” Jacobson said.
“It was pretty cool,” Jacobson said. “I’m missing it already. But I’m not using it enough.”
In 1982 Jacobson was given a seine boat that had sunk in the Skagway harbor. He and a friend dove down and refloated it to shore. He ended up burning the boat, but salvaged the running gear and its Cat diesel engine.
“I had a newly rebuilt 4-cylinder engine that needed a boat,” Jacobson said.
He drew up plans and started constructing the vessel in 1984. He repurposed old Douglas fir pilings from the White Pass dock to craft the keel and frames.
“At that time I attended the first wooden boat school in Port Townsend, Washington and learned many design and building suggestions.”
His son, Joey Jacobson, helped paint the frames and floor of the Arcturus when he was just 2 years old.
It took Jacobson six years to build his power barge. He used it to salvage beached logs around Skagway, Haines and the outer coast. Jacobson owned a sawmill and sold the milled lumber. He also used the Arcturus to haul building materials and furniture for people who needed things delivered to a beach.
Jacobson also used the boat to haul and escort people. He took glacial rebound researchers out to Eldred Rock, escorted Steve Vick on his Juneau access road protest swim from Haines to Juneau and hosted bachelor party festivities in Seward.
“We had a lot of good times. Lots of good parties,” Jacobson said.
His favorite memory was traveling around Baranof Island and beach logging with his son when they hit some rough water while towing an inflatable dingy near Eagle Rock in Cape Omany. Their dog, who needed to relieve itself, was also on board.
“We were going around the outside and going through some really big chop and stuff and we looked back and the dingy was gone,” Jacobson said. “The dog was going crazy, wanting to go to shore. Joey goes up to the top of the mast and finally sees it there. We got it and were able to hook onto it and pull it back around to the lee side and we got the dog ashore to go for a whiz.”
Joe Jacobson said they were the biggest waves he had ever seen in Alaska.
“We went around this point and the waves stacked up,” Joe Jacobson said. “They had to have been 20 feet. We made it through them then turned around to go back through them to get the dingy.”
Joe Jacobson also misses the Arcturus. He said it was instrumental in building their family homestead at the end of Beach Road.
“I loved that boat,” Jacobson said. “It was a cool boat.”
Terry Jacobson sold the Arcturus for $18,000 in September to a man in Wrangell who will also use it to haul lumber.