The F/V Faithful, a 36-foot wooden troller, sank just before New Year in the Haines Harbor — the second boat that month to sink in the harbor.
Borough staff saw the boat listing the morning of Dec. 30 and worked to get pumps onboard. While setting up pumps, with harbormaster Henry Pollan in the hull of the boat, the boat rolled onto its side and quickly sank. Pollan was able to exit the boat and soon after cut the boat loose to prevent damage to the dock.
The boat has a 300-gallon fuel tank, and there was a sheen on the water surface after the boat went down, but the state has not yet determined how much fuel was onboard or how much spilled, said Jason Jones of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. The case remains open.
The boat’s owner, Adrian Knowles of Homer, was not able to reach Haines on short notice to salvage the boat. Instead, local shipwright Joe Jacobson agreed to take on salvage duties in exchange for ownership of the Faithful.
Jacobson thinks cold weather and the condition of the boat caused it to sink.
“It had a leaking stuffing box, which is where the driveshaft goes through the hull,” Jacobson said. “The bilge pumps had frozen solid. All it took was time and heavy snow.”
Jacobson, harbor staff, and the salvage team were able to move the boat to the beach and refloat it in a similar method to the Pavlof, using large fenders from the cruise ship dock as buoyancy. In fact, Jacobson said, they moved the cruise dock’s Yokohama fenders directly from the Pavlof to the Faithful.
After diving and working underwater on the Pavlof salvage, Jacobson said he — and the rest of the salvage team — stayed dry while working on the Faithful.
“The whole mission was, nobody gets wet on this one. It was so cold, it’s not good to be diving in those conditions.”
Now, two weeks after the fact, the boat is floating, motoring, and steering again. Jacobson has had plenty of help in the repair project, as he did in the salvage.
“Everybody has leaned in,” he said. “The crew just comes together.”
Despite that good outcome, costs continue for the harbor.
In November, the previous owner, Knowles, had lost annual moorage status and had begun paying fines after failing to prove seaworthiness to harbor staff.
After sinking, harbor staff participated in the salvage, something Pollan said was a necessity, but not a welcome necessity.
“Salvaging boats is not a municipal service,” Pollan said. “In an emergency we’ll take emergency actions, all the time. But I don’t want anybody to get hurt, and we don’t want to damage the infrastructure, so we have to kind of walk a delicate line between providing the services and facilities we’re expected to provide and being there for people, but not going so far above and beyond to become the de facto salvage.”
Pollan said the borough invoices boat owners for materials and labor costs, and damage to infrastructure when boats sink. Pollan said the invoice to Knowles was roughly $3,500.
Repair to harbor floats will be necessary in the coming months after the recent sinkings and heavy snow. But at least the Faithful seems to have a brighter future ahead.
Jacobson says someday he hopes to be able to get the troller fishing again.
“The best thing in this case is that the boat is not being crushed up by a loader or dragged out and sunk by the coast guard. It’s a good boat. It has so much potential.”