Edit:  We completed the Sail Back to the Bay this summer!  Read the comments and watch the videos on our KBWBS group page on Facebook.

Once There Were Thousands.  Now There Is One.

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For 66 years, the salmon of Bristol Bay were harvested from sailboats -- double-ended wooden gillnetters manned by two rugged fishermen.  That all changed in 1951 when the Territory of Alaska allowed powered boats to fish the waters of Bristol Bay.

To commemorate this transition -- and our bounty of wild salmon and the longevity of the Bristol Bay commercial fishery -- the Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust will sail one of the last remaining seaworthy Bristol Bay double-ended sailboats from Homer back to Bristol Bay.  Most of the sailboats are gone, a few remain in museums and even fewer remain as operating vessels.  Those few that may still be on the water have been heavily modified.  There is one, however, that remains in its original sailing configuration, a Libby, McNeil & Libby double-ender dating to the 1930's in Homer, Alaska.

We need your support to make some minor repairs and to cover the costs of the expedition from Homer to Bristol Bay.  We will sail from Homer during SeaFair the 4th of July weekend, 2020.  The course will reverse the way the boat came, across Cook Inlet, over the Pile Bay Road, down Lake Illiamna and the Kvichak River to Bristol Bay, arriving in Naknek for Fishtival, near the end of the commercial season.  We will stop in communties along the way to share the celebration, and to gather stories which we'll compile in a published booklet about the journey.

This project is part of the Cannery History Project celebrating the cannery workers from Alaska and around the world who made the Bristol Bay Commercial Fishery the most productive on earth.

Help Us Make History!
You can help make this important journey possible, with a donation towards this project.  You can donate by check to:  Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust, Sailing Back to the Bay Project, PO Box 1388, Dillingham, AK 99576. 

Or, to pay by credit card, click on the following website:  www.secure.donationpay.org/bristolbaylandtrust 
And be sure you mark the Sailing Back to the Bay Project!

                          Michael Karl Orth     Born October 5th 1952     Died April 17th 2016
     When we talk about death, we must talk about life.  Sometimes somebody comes along that is bigger than life.  This would be the case when we talk about the life of Mike Orth.  In his own words a few months before his death he said, "I've had one hell of a run".  He is survived by his loving wife, Trish, and numerous siblings, nieces and nephews, as well as abundant friends and acquaintances.  His life enriched the lives of all who knew him.  After a sixteen year battle with cancer that amazed his doctors in Washington as well as in Alaska for his robust constitution, he quietly slipped his mooring on the morning of April 17th.
     The strongest themes in Mike's life were commercial fishing and the sea.  He made his first long voyage in an open canoe as a young man.  He and a friend paddled several hundred miles down the Mississippi, revisiting the haunts of Huck Finn, but torrential rain forced an end to their trip.  Another time he navigated a vessel through the Panama Canal and brought it back to Alaska.  On yet another occasion, he found a sailboat for some friends to buy down south and helped them sail it to Homer.
​          Mike's love affair with the sea started when he got a job working in a cannery in Dutch Harbor in the early seventies.  He quickly traded in cannery work for a fish-picking job in the Bristol Bay salmon fishery.  From there he crewed on a catcher processor, and various crab boats in Shelikof Straights, Kodiak and the Bering Sea.  He stepped up to the Captain position and ran boats for others.  he ran the Constance for opilio crab in the Bering Sea.  (The lengthened Constance is now the Tempo Sea that home ports in Homer.)  His ability as a mechanic and problem solver served him well and he rose up through the ranks.  He became intimate with Alaska's savage coastline and fierce weather.  He was a warehouse of knowledge about the ocean and her many moods.
     In 1979 he survived a shipwreck on the crabber Sirius.  An inexperienced crew was on wheel watch at night and ran the vessel hard aground on the well charted Douglas Reef north of Kodiak.  When the fishing vessel hit the reef and started to sink in the February gale, they were short one survival suit.  Quick thinking created an improvised survival suit with layers of wool, some flotation, rain gear and lots of duct tape for the guy without a suit.  They all went overboard into rough seas in the dark as the Sirius got battered on the reef.  It eventually slid off the rocks and went to the ocean bottom.  Thankfully they were rescued by the Polar Shell, another crab boat that was in the vicinity who had heard their "May Day".  From there they were air-lifted to Kodiak by Alaska's fines, the United States Coast Guard.
     Another near death encounter happened when the skiff he was riding in capsized off the beach in very rough seas.  The skiff sunk from beneath him, but the bow was kept afloat by a watertight air chamber.  Mike and another fellow clung for dear to that pointy bow for hours as they got buffeted by freezing wind and waves.  Luckily, their distress was spotted by a passing vessel that sent in another skiff to rescue them before their strength gave out.
     In the off-season, when Mike was not tendering, he was tapped to run other vessels in the Arctic for Dave Aldrich, who valued Mike's honesty and knowledge of sea ice and his calmness during crisis.  His navigation and common sense skills were exemplary.  He also worked for Dave in Cook Inlet.
     Twenty five years ago he and Trish started running the Rolfy.  They then purchased it in 1996.  The Rolfy is a 90 foot power scow built in 1941.  She was the first vessel of its kind and dozens were built after her.  Many were commissioned for wartime use as transport ships during the Aleutian Campaign in World War Two, then they were returned to Bristol Bay after the war to resume cannery tendering.  The Rolfy did not go to war.  The power scows were valued as good fish packers.  They were seaworthy as well as shallow in draft.  They coould navigate in the shallow waters of Bristol Bay in half the depth of similar sized vessels.  Mike once said he wasn't worried about the vessel sinking because there was so much wood in it.
     One year the Rolfy got a contract to haul boat loads of humpies from the hatcheries in Prince William Sound to the Ocean Beauty cannery in Cordova.  They lost power in the ship's channel in Hinchinbrook Entrance in a hundred mph blow.  It was dark and stormy and they were dead in they water in the oil tanker lane.  The woman crew said she should have been worried about their situation, but Mike was so calm that it rubbed off on her.  She said she felt safe despite their predicament.  They had a spare pull-start generator topside that was quickly employed and with power restored, they competed their voyage.
     Going aboard the Rolfy was always a treat.  Trish had the galley and skipper's stateroom looking like a studio apartment in San Francisco.  The three staterooms could sleep a total of nine.  The crew stateroom had two small desks attached to the wall.  The wheel house was old school mahogany.  She creaked in a storm something wicked.  Its GPS, radar, radios and radar merged it with the modern world.  From the wheel house you had a sweeping view of a planked deck with large fish hold hatches and tendering gear and two giant black booms that swept skyward.  A mast rose vertically between the booms to a crow's nest and antenna farm.  If you dared to climb all the way up to that crow's nest, you would get one hell of a view of the world.
     The steel covered focsle was forward and housed freezers for food storage and lines, straps and other tools of the trade.  On top of the focsle, sat the anchor winch and the huge and the huge anchor.  The head was out the galley door and down a set of steel stairs.  There was a small workshop and tool room down there as well as a washer and dryer, and the refrigeration systems.  Down another set of stairs, there were four motors, two main engines forward and two generators aft.
     One time Mike, Trish and a bunch of friends decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner cruise, with all the fixings.  The day was stormy but they tossed line anyway and steamed over to Halibut Cove and found a lee shore.  It was a memory maker for everybody as they crowded around the galley table and had a feast.
     He became one of Ocean Beauty's star tendermen on his vessel "Rolfy", serving salmon fishermen in Bristol Bay and Kodiak.  His wife, Trish, who worked alongside him on the Rolfy, was known fleet-wide for her "Rolfy" bars, a nutritious power bar made of oats, nuts, seeds, honey and other delicious ingredients.  Many fishermen in the Bay went out of their way to deliver to Mike and Trish.  He was fair, competent and ran a tight, friendly ship.  They greeted all the fishermen by name and made them feel welcome and significant.  Mike and Trish both put their heart and soul into that ship.  It was their precious vessel.  At the end of the 2015 season in Bristol Bay, when the Rolfy was set to sail from the Naknek River to Kodiak, all the cannery workers and personnel at Ocean Beauty were summoned to the dock and lined up as the Rolfy tossed lines.  They were there to salute Mike and Trish for their excellent service over the years, knowing, because of his illness, it might be the last time they would get to honor him.  It was.
     Although Mike and Trish were considered married, they had never actually got married.  They tied the knot on Mike's birthday last fall, October 5, 2015, in a small wedding ceremony aboard the Rolfy in the Homer Boat Harbor, followed by a gala celebration of their union at the Salty Dawg.  It was a standing room only crowd and people came out of the woodwork to help Mike and Trish celebrate their special day.
     Mike was the oldest boy of fourteen siblings.  He excelled in football in high school, where he played fullback as a varsity letter man for three years.  He spent a part of high school abroad in Germany, where he found many mountains to climb, fueling his adventurous spirit.  He almost joined the seminary.  He was also an avid skier and skilled wrestler.  He received a full scholarship to the University of Washington for his rowing skills and he maintained a 4.0 grade point average there.  His rowing team went to the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
     He was loved by all who knew him.  His silence spoke more than words.  He hardly ever lost his calm stoicism and his keen sense of humor.  He was always gentle and present and had a huge helping of patience.  He once told his wife Trish that he modeled his life after none other than Jesus Christ.  Not in the religious sense, with all the spin, but Jesus the man, Jesus the prophet.  The love thy neighbor and thy enemy kind of guy, the Jesus who would give the shirt off of his own back to help another.  He was generous with his wallet as well as with his spirit.  If you crewed for Mike, he always picked up the bill at the bar or restaurant, and paid his crew a living wage.
     Mike did not go to church.  The sea was his church and the Rolfy wheelhouse his altar.  He never spoke ill of anybody.  He loved his family and friends very much.  He had a big spot in his heart for all of nieces and nephews.  He was an awesome and loyal friend.  He also loved taking his golden lab, Bosun, for beach walks.
     One of the favorite stories about Mike happened when he was a young teenager.  His friend's brother was going to a concert with his buddies.  His mom told him he had to take his younger brother and Mike along or else!  When they arrived at the show, the older brother said, "Ha ha...you don't have tickets!  See ya!", and then he disappeared into the show with his friends, leaving the two younger boys in the parking lot.  Feeling left out, the boys followed the fence to the back of the outside stage and then crawled through a hole in the fence.  There was a group of hippies around a fire and when they noticed the boys, they told them to come on over and were offered beers.  They were having a good old time when the hippies said they had to go to work.  They made their way to the stage and told the boys where they could watch from back stage.  Mike and his friend had just hung out with Pig Pen, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and the rest of the Grateful Dead, and they had the best seats at the show!
     Mike loved music and he loved to read.  he saw some of the most famous musicians of his generation live and in concert, like The Who, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan.  He read voraciously across all genres and especially liked the sea-adventure stories like Patrick O'Brien's 21 book series that started with Master and Commander.  Mike's grandfather John Orth was a famous painter, commissioned to do portraits of some of our presidents.  JFK once sent him a nice note thanking him for the portrait and complimented him on his work.
     Mike always said his mom, Elizabeth, was a saint.  His oldest sister, Erika, said Mike was most like their mom of all 14 siblings.  His dad, Alex, was a photographer and teacher.  He had a very colorful life as well.  When Mike was asked by his German host if he was related Alex Orth, Mike said that Alex was his father.  All of the hiking boots and ski boots the Orth family had purchased over many years were ordered from Germany from this very same man that was hosting Mike.  It was pure coincidence that Mike was picked by this family to stay with them.
     When Mike passed at 8:30 am, at home, on Sunday morning, April 17th, family and friends were sitting with his body lying in state that same evening.  They were discussing arrangement to get Mike to the mortuary in Kenai.  The arrangements Mike had made prior to his death involved four friends to carry his body to Mike Kennedy's flat bed truck, where he would be strapped down with no fan fare.  This was to happen at high noon the next day.  Mike Kennedy would then transport Mike's body to Kenai.  When these arrangements were discussed, all were surprised that Mike would be strapped to a flat bed and transported that manner.  A suggestion was made to put Mike in a boat on a trailer and transport him to Kenai that way.
     The idea was quickly embraced by all involved, a rowing dory up on barrels in Mike's yard was selected as the boat, and all of a sudden a Viking send=off was planned for the next day.  It was 11:00 pm.  Texts were sent to a dozen or so close friends and the next morning folks started showing up at the house.  The dory, a seventeen foot, two man, lapstrake planked, double ender, was overturned and decorated with wooden corks, prayer flags, cottonwood branches and other "gifts" that people wanted to share.  Planks from the Rolfy were laid in the bottom of the boat and then a mattress.  With lots of help, Mike was carefully carried out of his house and then was laid to rest in the bottom of the boat.  The boat was lifted onto the trailer and strapped down.  Everyone joined hands in a circle around the boat, a toast was made, and a hauntingly beautiful song was sung acapella by one of Mike's female friends.  There were tears and farewells.  A small procession of vehicles followed the boat out of the driveway and the 75 miles to Kenai.  This would be Mike's last boat ride, Viking-style.  Everyone was sure Mike was laughing all the way to heaven.
     Mike was preceded in death by both his parents, Alex and Elizabeth.  He had a baby sister, Mary, who died when she was eight months old.  His brother in law, Gary, passed to years ago.
     Mike is survived by his loving wife, Tricia Caron, and step-daughter, Kristen Bernazzani.  He has twelve surviving siblings:  Erika Marks, Paul Orth, Kristy Enser, Mark Orth, Stephanie Hurless, Walt Orth, Matt Orth, Kris Orth, Andy Orth, Rob Orth, Julie Chrest and Tom Orth.  There are a large number of nieces and nephews and one grand-niece, as well as numerous in-laws.  Also surviving is his faithful dog, Bosun, who misses him very much.
     Any donations can be made to Hospice of Homer.  There is a also a memorial fund website:  fundrazr.com/CaptainMichaelOrth, to help Trish pay some of the large medical bills and also to help pay for tiles at Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal and the Homer Seafarer's Memorial.  The Rolfy is for sale and comes with a two year tendering contract.  That boat sure made Mike happy.  It would surely make someone else happy too.
     A Celebration of Mike's Life was held on May 21, 2016 at a friend's residence in Homer.

One hand for yourself one hand for the ship
Captain Mike Orth has let his mooring line slip
For the stars afar and the land beyond the shimmering seas
Where angels spread the sails of his mighty ship
He sets a course where no mortals go
Those left in his wake, who loved him so
We bid farewell, we bid farewell

This memorial was written by Andrew Wills of Homer.
     
​

This is the Indomita, a 30 foot, full keel, ketch rigged Baltic Trader.  These are some of the ways you can participate in Project Indomita:  Join the Wooden Boat Society - Donate materials - Donate furnishings - Donate funds (tax-exempt) - Participate in work sessions - Bring potluck food to work sessions - Design and build - Plan educational expeditions - Tour the Indomita - Sign up for an excursion round the Bay - Learn to crew the Indomita - Sign up to crew an expedition - Volunteer at Wooden Boat Society headquarters.  For more info, e-mail info@kbwbs.org and mention Indomita.

Thanks to Kevin Dee and Corey Freedman, many kayaks and an umiak were on display at the boat show.  Thanks to John Miles and Pat Ladd, hundreds of toy boat hulls were transformed by kids into colorful boatlets.  Quite a few people got out on the Bay to row boats and paddle kayaks.  

T-shirts and hoodies were sold featuring the exciting logo by the Lind sisters, Three Kayaks.  New members joined, old members renewed, and old friendships continued.  Auction night at Alice's Champagne Palace was a great success, thanks to Tricia Caron and Trish Lillibridge. A beautiful ad in the Homer News thanked the many participants and supporters who made this festival happen.

Following the Festival, the Kachemak Bay Wooden Boat Society voted to open a temporary headquarters in downtown Homer, at 158 West Pioneer Avenue.  The phone number is 235-BOAT (235-2628) and visitors are welcome.  

2014 will be the year of Build Your Own Boat.  Stay turned for educational developments designed to offer the hundreds of Homer Youth who have built toy boats an opportunity to build real boats!

Friday night Glenn Caldwell stole the show with his raconterial skill.  We owe him a lot for getting the whole Festival idea off the ground in the first place, back in 1992.  He was followed be a wonderful movie, “Charlotte,” about the Gannon and Benjamin yard back east at Marblehead, a little burg  reminiscent of Homer, where the whole town turns out for a launching.  We still have copies for sale at the very reasonable price of $25. 

Saturday the usual swarms of kids were hammering and painting and drying their boats on the big stove.  Norm Griffin showed up and beamed at the fuss made over him.  He’s done so much for us and others in his quiet steady way.  We had net mending with Jim James, and bronze casting with Dan Young and Leo Vait.  Good show, gentlemen!  Dan is a steam guy and machinist, and Leo can do anything artistic.  Saturday evening brought the sunshine, and our auction suffered significantly, but those who were there made out like bandits, yours truly included (I bought the wineglass wherry kit for $700 eat your hearts out!)  My heart was sinking when our intrepid auctioneer Bumppo looked around at the (lack of) crowd and said, “OK, there’s gonna be some deals tonight!  Later, the Rogues and Wenches pulled in a good crowd and we danced til we dropped.  Great Show!

Sunday more sunny weather at the festival site on the Spit.  Our hot dog guy from up the road was very popular.  I had dogs for breakfast and lunch.  The Smolt, Bristol Bay double ender from Seldovia, floated beautifully just off shore, unfortunately unavailable for rides due to a funny combination of falling tide on a flat beach and an onshore chop.  Lots of nice boats were represented, and the canoes of Norm Griffin (supposedly his last boat, ya sure!) and Dave Brann’s Old Town got lots of conversation and accolades.  Renn Tolman was his inimitable self, Ryjil Christianson did Ted Pedersen’s Whaleboat proud, and we had everything wrapped up by 9pm, for a last drink at the Dawg with those lucky enough to last that long.  John Miles and Cam Forbes went beyond the call of duty towing the Smolt back to Seldovia the next day.

The 20th Annual Wooden Boat Festival, held in the unpredictable weather of a late September weekend, was a success! Participants carried on through some blustery, rainy first days, and were rewarded with a gorgeous Sunday to close out the Festival.

– Dave Seaman

Her original designation was USA ST (small tug) 413. After the war she was transferred to the Federal Aviation Agency, renamed the Fedair III, and survived sitting for 5 years, and through a succession of owners, until being purchased by John Rogers and converted for charters and bear watching tours. She has great tugboat lines and has warm and comfortable accommodations.  We are planning to have her open for tours. More info at the Festival.