Sailboat Fishing: a Boat that Pays Her Way

By Mary Ann Black
Published on May 1, 1980
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A former pleasure craft, the Choice became a sailboat fishing vessel earning its keep as part of the northern California salmon fishing fleet.
A former pleasure craft, the Choice became a sailboat fishing vessel earning its keep as part of the northern California salmon fishing fleet.
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A number of scenes from the day-to-day life of the sailboat, Choice.
A number of scenes from the day-to-day life of the sailboat, Choice.

“You’ve got to be kidding!” the fisherman scoffed. “You can’t catch salmon with a sailboat these days!

We smiled but didn’t bother to argue . . . after all, we’d already spent seven months of our time, all the energy we could muster, and most of our available money at sailboat fishing, all under the skeptical eyes of local fisherfolk.

Our boat Choice (she’s a 44-foot, ferro-cement, double-ender with a cutter rig) was originally built by northern Californian Stan Clark, who constructed the vessel behind his house in midtown Fort Bragg. Ordinarily, a ferro-cement boat can be completed in less than 12 months, but it took Stan years of spare-time work to finish this one. In fact, by the time the sailboat was launched, her lines were almost as much a part of the town as were the bakery, the drugstore, and the camera shop. The folks in his hometown were so involved in the project that, when Stan set about to cure the cement, road work in the center of the city was stopped for 30 days . . . while water from the curing process coursed down the main streets.

Stan and his artist wife Georgia had done a lot of cruising, and Choice was their ninth boat. There’s no way to estimate the value of the labor involved in the construction, but the materials used cost less than $7,000. Sadly, arthritis ended Stan’s seafaring days . . . and he sold the vessel without ever sailing her out of the harbor.

Sea Treasure

I can’t even swim, but the purchase of the boat inevitably brought thoughts of cruising to faraway places while writing books and articles. However, although my partner Dick and I had severed our ties with school-teaching in suburbia, we were realistic romantics . . . and figured our fantasies were only beautiful dreams. We bought Choice simply to provide ourselves with a place where we could live inexpensively while we were working at freelance writing.

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