Late Tuesday evening Haines’ Small Boat Harbor was mostly quiet except for the occasional crack of ice breaking and sliding into the water, until you walked up on the Commander’s Palace. There, a steady stream of water pumped continuously from a hose snaked out of one of the windows. It’s a lot of water, though the flooding had not yet reached the main deck.
Acting harbormaster Jeremiah Kinison walked through the boat, checking the hose on the pump he’d hauled down, checking the shore power plug nearby.
Kinison said he got a call at about 7 p.m. on Tuesday saying that the pleasure cruiser Commander’s Palace was taking on water and needed immediate attention. The bow of the boat was sitting low in the water.
“[The caretaker] came down to look and check it out and called me. He started shoveling while I was getting here and getting a pump,” Kinison said.
After setting up the pump and inspecting the boat, Kinison said he suspected the bilge pump was the culprit. He’d plugged the boat back into power and all of the lights came on, but the bilge pump didn’t automatically kick on despite being submerged in water. Further investigation revealed that one of the wires in the pump wasn’t connected.
Kinison said it’s a good reminder for people to check on their boats. It’s not unusual for vessels to get swamped when a heavy snow follows a freeze. Much of the Lynn Canal and communities south into the Icy Strait corridor were blanketed with snow Saturday and Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. That snow transitioned into slush and rain in Haines beginning Monday.
Kinison said it seems like harbor staff end up having to pump water from someone’s boat every winter. A fishing boat tied up next to the Commander’s Palace was listing heavily toward the dock. Kinison said he’d already checked that one for water earlier in the day but had not found anything.
Ultimately, the Commander’s Palace had to be pumped out all night, said boat caretaker Billy Finnan on Wednesday morning. He was headed to buy another bilge pump as the one on the Palace appeared to have stopped working.
Both Finnan and Kinison said the boat was still taking on water, though Finnan thought it was coming from snow piled on the deck while Kinison said it looks like the outflow for the bilge pump was below the waterline and that’s why it was taking on water.
“Hopefully, they’ll get that drained,” he said.
In other harbor news, Henry Pollan is now the new harbormaster. He started as a seasonal harbor assistant in 2012. Pollan, who also goes by “Harbor Henry,” later served as the assistant harbormaster in 2017.
Interim borough manager Elke Doom wrote in an email on Wednesday that he’d signed a contract. She did not respond to repeated requests to share the negotiated salary for the position.
The harbormaster, however, stopped into the Chilkat Valley News office and said he started worked on Dec. 3, and will be making $40.04 an hour.
“I am super happy to be coming back home,” Pollan said. “I plan to deliver the same high quality service that I provided in the past and, if anything, exceed it beyond anyone’s expectations.”