Cape Disappointment, the town of Ilwaco

September, 2020

One day, not surprisingly, I decided to explore the small town of Ilwaco that’s just a hop and a skip from the campground. Ilwaco boasts the Columbia River Heritage Museum, the Don Nisbett Art Gallery, the Time Enough bookstore for used and new books (it is highly regarded), and the impressive SkyWater Gallery. The Olde Towne Trading Post was highly recommended to me by a friend of mine … it’s a mix of great antiques and a quiet coffee shop where mostly just the locals go, so you know it has to be good. I went to all of these places, and more. Unfortunately, all but one (the bookstore) was closed because of COVID19. I am definitely going to come back here someday.

But I did get to explore the bookstore and I explored another area of town that I was looking forward to … the marina. I’ve owned and cruised two different boats in my life on Puget Sound and up into Canada. I spent 12 years with my first boat (Redhead … the boat below) and 18 years with my second boat (Pied Piper).

When I sold Redhead about 17 years ago, I sold it to a husband/wife who lived in Ilwaco, who said they would be keeping the boat in the marina there and would be pleasure cruising and fishing the Columbia River with the boat, along with an occasional fishing excursion out onto the ocean when the weather was cooperative.

Yes, yes, I know, they bought that boat from me 17 years ago, and maybe they’d sold “my” boat to someone else by now. Maybe the boat was in Missouri or Canada or Boston by now, who knows. But the marina in Ilwaco wasn’t too large. I could walk the docks in an hour or so, and the day was sunny and warm. So off I went.

I’ll tell you right up front … Redhead wasn’t there. But I did find three other boats built by the same company, Campion, and built about the same year. Each time I saw one of those boats in the distance up the dock, my heart skipped a beat. Ah me, sigh, but none of them was my Redhead.

Still, I had a good time walking the docks (I love boats). There were all manner of recreational boats here (for cruising on and enjoying the Columbia River), and recreational fishing boats here (where the owner fishes the river and the ocean), and there are a significant number of charter fishing boats (you can hire the whole boat and captain and crew for just yourself on the boat, or you can simply pay for you and family/friends to accompany a group of others on the boat), and there are a great number of commercial, professional, large fishing boats here that fish out on the ocean when the fish are running or the season is open, etc, such that the people who captain and crew those boats go out in weather that’s not always so nice. But the captains and crew of these large commercial boats are extrememly competent people and the boats are extremely sea-worthy. I had a blast looking at boats and chatting up the folks I met on the dock.

Let me show you a few photos from my day walking the docks.

The first few photos below are of commercial charter fishing boats … boats and captain and crew for hire that take people fishing out on the ocean.

These are big boats compared to most recreational boats that I’m familiar with.

They are tidy boats, well maintained, with all the safety gear in proper order.

And the engines are spectacular! The last boat I owned had two large 8-cylinder engines inside the boat … each engine in that boat was 135 HP. In 1939, when that boat was built, that was a lot of horse power! But here in the photo above we see three outboard engines, each with 300 HP. Each one of these engines is more powerful than both of my engines together. Mine were 270 HP combined … this one boat had 900 HP of power behind it. Of course, the boat in the photo above was certainly heavier than mine was, and the boat above needed that power to deal with the weather and the water conditions over the “bar”. 900 HP is impressive!

I also enjoyed the names of some of the boats. As I walked past the stern of the boat in the photo above, a fellow was walking past me. I stopped and snapped the photo. Then the fellow stopped too, we chatted, and he said that a friend of his, an older fellow, had died just a few years ago, and that his four sons (the sea’sons) had continued their father’s charter boat company with this new boat with this new name. That was very cool.

Another fun name below …

 

The charter fishing boat above has two outboard motors, Yamaha 425HP 5.6L V8 outboards. These outboards aren’t made for putzin’ around the lake or the bay on a quiet Sunday summer afternoon. A brand new one of these monsters weighs about 1,000 pounds and costs about $44,000 … each! The charter boat in the photo above obviously has two of these demons. That’s one TON of weight hanging off the swim platform, and a whole lot of power.

And then there were these three sweet sisters below. Another fellow walked by when I snapped the photo below. He said they were owned by one local fellow who ran a charter fishing company with the three boats. He said he had been out on each of them, and he liked the smallest boat the best … Westward.

And on down each dock I walked. There were several separate docks, each one rather long. I chatted briefly with a few men and women. A number of folks simply waved at me and I waved back. I suspect they knew I was a dock-walker; I suspect they all know who’s a local and who’s a tourist.

Eventually, I left the docks with recreational boats and charter boats and I headed over to the docks with the big commercial fishing boats.

The docks full of commercial fishing boats were even larger and longer than the docks with the other boats.

These commercial boats don’t take passengers … they just go out fishing in order to catch fish for re-sale. These folks brave the weather and the wind and the waves, although I’m sure they too watch the weather and make choices accordingly. They too want to come home, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The boat above, Aallotar, caught my eye. It was obviously a wooden hulled boat, so probably it was an old boat, though you couldn’t tell that from how exceptionally well it was maintained. She was a beauty, perfectly maintained. Aallotar is a Finnish woman’s name according to the internet. She was handsome.

The narrow entry of the bow (the narrow hull at the front end of the boat) might make some people nervous, but in truth this narrow entry makes the boat more stable than some of the wider, newer boats. Notice the anchor in the photo above … it hangs over the same side of the boat that those wood planks are on, the planks that cover the front part of the hull of the boat. Those wood planks protect the hull from damage from the anchor, from raising and lowering the anchor when needed. It’s a whole lot easier and less expensive to replace those small wood planks than it is to replace entire 40 or 50 foot long planks in the hull of the boat.

Below, this is the entire superstructure of Aallotar. Compared to others of these commercial boats, this might seem rather minimal, but all of the necessary components were there … and they were clean, lubricated, properly secured, modern, and (I suspect) in perfect working order.

What a great day! I walked up off the docks, back onto land, happy as a clam as they say hereabouts. 🙂

I do have one more thing to report. After I got home from this camping trip, I researched the ownership of Redhead online. It took me quite some time, but eventually I found that “my” boat had indeed been sold by those folks in Ilwaco. Redhead is now owned by a man in Astoria, Oregon, and is moored in a marina on the south side of the mouth of the Columbia River, just four miles to the south of Ilwaco across this great river. You know me! I’m now planning a camping trip to Astoria, Oregon. Maybe I’ll go in 2021, I hope so … stay tuned!