THE ALASKA FISHERMAN'S JOURNAL

Barnstorming Sequim Bay
Building success from the bottom up

by John Van Amerongen

It’s a gorgeous afternoon on Sequim Bay, a four-mile long bite of protected water on the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula between Port Townsend and Port Angeles. Albert Lindstrom and John Kirkham have invited me for a test ride in their freshly-tweaked 26-footer, and we are screaming along at better than 40-mph. It’s flat calm and the boat is rock stable, so I’m sitting up on the windshield taking a photo of the two partners as we scoot along past John Wayne Marina. It seems the “Duke” liked to visit Sequim Bay when he was vacationing aboard his converted 136-foot minesweeper the Wild Goose. Wayne is long gone, but his legacy remains on Sequim Bay in the name and the presence of the marina itself. He promised to donate the property if someone would pick up the ball and develop the site. Eventually somebody did. “‘No brag, just fact”. That’s what the Duke used to say - a show-me kind of guy. That’s pretty much what Lindstrom and Kirkham are all about.

“You can’t really explain it to anybody,” Lindstrom said of the boat’s performance. “They’ve got to feel it for themselves.” That’s why the boat was idling at the dock when I showed up for the appointment. The plan was not to sit me down in a conference room, show me photos and tell me all the great things the boat would do. Lindstrom’s plan was to get me out on the water as soon as possible and let me feel the deal for myself. They didn’t have much doubt that I’d be impressed. Friendly and polite, they were kind of quiet about what they had under their hats. Too quiet, to borrow another quote from the Duke. If I were playing poker with these guys, I’d be careful not to call their bluff too often.

“I’ve been screwing with it for twenty years,” Lindstrom said. “John and I have worked together for about twelve years off and on, chopping and changing it till we got it where we want.” After a few quick warm-up laps of the bay, Lindstrom let the boat come to a halt in the middle. “Watch this,” he said, punching the throttle all the way forward and tweaking the power trim on the 200 hp Merc as the prop began to slip just a bit. It’s amazing how your muscles remember what it’s like to be in an outboard when you put the juice to it. My thigh muscles tensed and I grabbed the dash preparing for the prop to dig a hole in the water and the bow to point skyward in the classic rear back and lunge “hit it” sequence. It didn’t happen. The boat took off with a controlled combination of forces that translated to rapidly accelerating forward motion and nearly level vertical lift. The boat was up on step in a hurry and we were hustling quietly over the Bay. Lindstrom figured we were doing somewhere around 45 mph. The boat’s official run, he said, was clocked at 47 mph.

At 26 feet long with a beam of 8 feet it’s admittedly no runabout. The water and the ride were both so smooth there was virtually no sensation of break-neck speed. We were shushing along quietly, like we were riding on powder snow. Lindstrom cranked the wheel over hard and once again my body prepared for the boat to dive in the forequarter as it hooked into the hot turn. Again, it didn’t happen. The boat simply carved a smooth arc in the bay and I had no sensation that I was going to be thrown anywhere.

Lindstrom still had a few tricks to perform. The next time he cranked the boat hard over at full speed, he abruptly pulled the throttle all the way back to neutral. When the boat dropped off step, it stopped in a hurry, but I was expecting a catastrophic lateral lurch and a giant wave of water to poop us from the stern. It didn’t happen. She just came to a stop and bobbed in position.

His final trick was to crank the wheel hard over at a dead stop and punch the boat onto a plan while it was running in a tight circle. Once again I was prepared for the worst, expecting a 200-hp whirlpool with the three of us flipped into the vortex. This time I was glad I was hanging on, but the boat did not dig its own grave; rather it rose to the occasion, got up to a plane and was already scooting when he straightened the wheel.

To anyone on the beach we surely looked like a bunch of kids squirreling around in dad’s boat. But this time, dad was aboard. I enjoyed the next part. Lindstrom brought the boat to a stop, stepped away from the console and said, “You drive.” I used to fish a 19-foot Glasply with a 135 hp Merc as a hand-troller out of La Push, so I was familiar with outboards. In fact, we lived right on Sequim Bay for a couple of years and I was familiar with the local pond too. Nevertheless, it seemed a bit careless to just hop in the saddle and put the spurs to it. So, I eased the throttle forward and assumed my professional, responsible look.

I must have been driving Lindstrom nuts, because he came up behind me and helped me jam the throttle full forward. Maneuvering among the Dungeness crab pot buoys in the Bay, I realized just how fast we were actually moving. The steering was a long teleflex-type cable, and the wheel was a little stiff against the torque of the Merc, but the boat arced gracefully through the turns and again, it was like snow skiing in perfect conditions. Minimal slip, just enough edge, and no hooking. Lindstrom noted that the wheeling would improve once they installed hydraulic steering.

Again, I was too conservative for Lindstrom, and he coaxed me into cranking the wheel hard over. The boat began to heel, but only until it picked up the lift of the inboard sponson and evened out through the sharp turn. I slalomed my way through a series of buoys and said to myself, “I need this boat.”

Right now, however, it’s one of a kind unless you count the 6-foot fiberglass prototype that Lindstrom and Kirkham built over the top (actually under the bottom) of a production Questar hull (formerly Glasply) back in 1995. That’s how they developed the underwater shape of their new aluminum design. They laid up foam and glass over the original mono-hull runabout to convert it to a twin-tunnel, or sponsoned, hull form. The morphed version ended up substantially wider than the original boat (see photo), which added stability when the boat was idling or at rest in the water. She wasn’t much to look at, but when power was applied, in this case a 115-hp Yamaha outboard, the little screamer was clocked at 57 mph, according to Kirkham.

In 1997 the partners approached boat builder, Vito Ruzich, of Hydraulic Fishing Supply in Anacortes, Washington. According to Lindstrom, he was the only builder who was willing to tackle the complicated, multi-chined hull form. He was also willing to accommodate the two partners as they tweaked the design of what they now call the North Pacific 26.

“He calls us the shoemakers,” Kirkham remembers with a smile. What came out of the shop was a much more conventional looking aluminum workboat. Well, conventional looking until you look at the bottom. The mass of angles has been called a “multi-chined V with hydro-sponsons” or a “”cathedral V” due to the complex shape. The critical angles of the bottom shape were break-formed out of 3/16 aluminum plate rather than individually welded. The lines of the “tunnels” and break-formed chines are perfectly straight, so they lend themselves to the forming process. The tricky part is joining the forward end of the complicated break-formed bottom to the rising curve of the bow.

Once the boats go into production, however, the hull parts will be computer-designed and engineered to fit for easy welding. Kirkham says the plan is to cut the parts with high-pressure water jets to minimize distortion and maximize the accuracy of the computer design.

The partners hope to sell the boats as kits, providing the aluminum parts to various builders operating under license agreements in different parts of the U.S. So, what do all those angles achieve? According to Kirkham and Lindstrom, the multiple lifting surfaces allow the boat to plane quickly, lifting it progressively onto the center portion of the hull, where the wetted surface is minimized on a fast flat hull form. The ride and stability are enhanced by the redirection of the wake generated by the center hull. As the wake splashes upward, aft and outboard it encounters the outboard hydro-sponson and is redirected downward and aft through the tunnels, flattening the wake and adding lift to the hull. As the wake splashes and bends into the tunnels, it also picks air and creates a foamy riding surface that reduces drag and softens the ride. (If you watch the transom at full speed, which I did, there is a steady stream of white foam coming out of the twin tunnels.)

As for technical data, Lindstrom has had the design reviewed by the technical staff at the Department of the Navy Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He conducted extensive sea trials in 1998, supervised by professional engineer Bradley Wolfe. At first the boat was powered by 115-hp Yamaha outboard. With two people aboard and 2,293 gallons of water in five 55-gal. drums, the boat weighed 6,373 pounds and was clocked at 24 knots, or 27.6 MPH. On a subsequent test after fitting the boat with the 200-hp outboard, it was clocked at 33 MPH carrying three people and six 60-gal barrels of water at a total weight of 9222 lbs.

What’s next for the boat is a trip to Idaho, to the shop of jet-boat builder Darryl Bentz at Bentz Boats in Lewiston Id. on the Snake River. The plan is to replace the outboard with one and perhaps two jet pumps and see what she’ll do on the river. The first configuration will use a 502 GM V-8 block and a Hamilton 421 jet unit.

back to homepage