This story was updated on Friday, Dec. 10 at 7:45 p.m.
It’s still not clear what caused the 81-foot tender, the F/V Pavlof to sink last Thursday in the Haines Harbor.
Harbormaster Henry Pollan said he was first notified of the boat sinking just before 10 a.m. Harbor staff worked the rest of the day laying oil-containment and absorption boom around the 84-year-old ship, which remained tied to the dock.
By then the boat was laying on its side on the seafloor, partially under the E float it was moored to — the float closest to the breakwater entrance. Through the afternoon as the tide dropped, more and more of the boat began to show above the waterline and the dock section propped on top of the hull began to lift.
Pollan and harbor staff disconnected the float and its electrical connections, allowing it to lift freely. By low tide, Pollan said, he thought the float would likely be fully out of the water.
Through the afternoon, under increasing darkness, community members worked to free the boat, or at least prepare it to be floated out from under the dock once the tide came back up, before a -4 foot low tide at 6:27 p.m.
A number of boats tried to pull the Pavlof out, including the F/V Rustler and F/V Shotgun. Divers, including Joey Jacobson and Luke Marquardt, worked underwater to attach lines to the hull.
Later, owner Brent Crowe called out the “outpouring of determination and pride in helping neighbors…I’ve never seen a place like this.”
In the end, crews were able to free the boat Friday morning without the barge or extra salvage help from Juneau. With extra floatation loaded into the Pavlof’s hull and the tide coming up, Gregg Bigsby’s F/V Rustler pulled the sunken boat out from under the dock and to the northeast corner of the harbor, Pollan said.
Said Bigsby, “Brent has always been the first one down here to help when there’s a catastrophe, so now he has a lot of helpers.”
By midday Friday, harbor staff were able to reattach the float that had been on top of the Pavlof to the rest of the dock.
Work to contain spilled fuel with containment booms continued through the day, even as the boat was moved. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s Rachael Krajewski, who heads the Division of Spill Prevention and Response for Southeast, said the department asked those at the site for a “commitment” that the containment boom remain around the boat even as it was moved and stabilized.
Crowe reported 1,300 gallons of fuel onboard at the time the Pavlof sank, Krajewski said.
During Saturday night’s low tide, crews pumped out enough water to refloat the boat. That required complex engineering by a host of volunteers, Crowe said, like an ad-hoc coffer dam built from plywood. All the work was amid heavy snow and well-below freezing temperatures, on a steeply pitched deck slick with oil.
“I went from, this isn’t possible to, we’re going to get it, to this isn’t possible over and over again,” Crowe said of the effort. “It was the people that showed up and the determination they had for success that was everything. People just didn’t take no for an answer.”
By Tuesday, Pollan said, the harbor staff’s work containing and removing the fuel was complete.
As of Wednesday afternoon, the boat was floating and had been tied back onto the dock and connected to power.
It’ll be weeks, Crowe said, before work on the boat and cleanup is done. His next task is to get the remaining fuel off the boat. “The panic is over but it will be a long time before it’s resolved for us or we know the future of the boat,” Crowe said. “This weather makes it so hard to get anything done.”
The boat is insured, but the Crowe family’s losses go beyond the financial hit.
The vessel has hosted birthday parties and shuttled wrestling teams and carried cookies and mail to trollers it buys from. In 2023, when weather threatened to derail the Haines High School wrestling team’s chance at making it to state, the Pavlof got the squad — including two seniors and a soon-to-be state champion — to Juneau.
“It’s our business, it’s our second home, it’s where we raised our kids,” Crowe said.
“Our son, Finn, he lives and breathes it,” said Crowe’s wife Jessica Crowe. “Even the gross fish smells he loves…The community and lots of people have been part of our lives, and the Pavlof is us.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported how much fuel was aboard the F/V Pavlof. According to the State Department of Environmental Conservation, there were 1,300 gallons of fuel aboard when it sank.