Boom Boat

[Marin]

During the process of gathering information on Minstrel Island for my current writing project we stopped in at the town of Sayward on the northeast coast of Vancouver Island on our drive up to Telegraph Cove. The harbor is called Kelsey Bay and it was the southern terminus of the Prince Rupert-Vancouver Island ferry run until the terminal was moved farther north to Port Hardy. When I and my friend took this ferry with my Land Rover in 1977, we came here.

The terminal is long gone but the harbor is still an active logging site with a dry-land sort yard and log raft building operation. A boom boat was busy in the harbor and I shot these photos. The choppy water in the background is the infamous Johnstone Strait.

Boom boats have fascinated me ever since I saw my first one in action and I've always wanted to learn to drive one. During our trip I talked to one of the operators and he said that when we come up next year he'll let me ride with one of his drivers and take a shot at it. We'll see what happens......

 

[Xsbank]

They also call them "Dozer Boats." They always look like they are going to tip over, but they don't.

 

[Diesel Duck]

Hmmmm... Interesting little workhorses. Maybe someone here on TF could mass produce them and market them as 'Boom Trawlers".

 

[hmason]

What do they do? Push the logs? Never seen anything like that.

 

[mbevins]

Kinda reminds me of a dodgem/bumper car on steroids.

 

[markpierce]

Log-handling boats can be as simple as a small open boat with outboard as can be barely seen at the base of the loading chute in this photo taken at a log mill on Vancouver Island. The craft moves logs to the chute.

 

[RT Firefly]

Greetings,
Hmmm....Boom boat with a boom box in which case the pilothouse would then become the Boom Boom room...

 

[Marin]

What do they do? Push the logs? Never seen anything like that.

Boom boats are used to make up log rafts which are then towed by tugs to the mills. They used to actually sort the logs in the water, too, but this proved to be much less efficient than sorting on land plus a fair number of logs "escaped" the sorting process and wandered off to become deadheads and sink boats and stuff.

So now almost all sorting is done on land and then the bundles of sorted logs are slid down a steel ramp into the water where the boom boats make them up into rafts, some of them a half a mile long. These are then towed from the logging areas to the mills farther south along the coast.

Dry land sorting is almost as impressive an operation to watch as the raft makeup. Here are some photos of just a small part of the huge dry sort yard in Beaver Cove on Vancouver Island near where we go fishing. This is the last railroad logging show left in Canada, and I believe all of North America.

The machine is picking up carloads of raw logs and carrying them to the sorting racks. When a bundle of sorted logs is ready to go a scaler (person) calculates the board feet and then another giant machine trundles in and automatically wraps the bundle in steel bands. Then the bundle is picked up by the same machines that unload the trains and is carried to the ramp and slid down into the water where the boom boats push them into position for the next raft. So the log raft, which appears to be a single layer of logs, is actually made up of bundles. Most of each bundle is below the surface.

I learned this summer that the sorting here used to be done in the water and the railroad cars were pushed onto a long trestle and their loads dumped directly into the water. A company town sat where the dry sort yard is today. When the logging company decided to switch to dry sorting, they offered to move the people in the town to company housing in nearby Port McNeil or pay them something toward buying a house of their own. When everybody had moved out they bulldozed the town and turned the site into the dry sort yard that's here today.

 

[Wayfarer]

I just spent half an hour watching YouTube videos of these goofy little clown boats. Neat!

https://youtu.be/CBhslev-SNA

 

[HopCar]

Thanks Marin. I'd never scene those before. Neat little boats.

 

[Marin]

Thanks Marin. I'd never scene those before. Neat little boats.

They are extremely maneuverable and very fast. At Expo 86 in Vancouver, BC they had a logging exhibition set up next to False Creek. They had loggers demonstrate all sorts of things including a demo of "hot saws" which are something amazing to see.

They brought in six (iirc) of the best boom boat drivers in BC and they had a well-known choreographer design a "Boom Boat Ballet" which was performed every hour or so out on the water in front of the stands. It was set to a classical ballet tune and the boats were decorated up with flags and streamers and whatnot. It was sort of like watching a line dance as the boats bobbed and rocked and spun around and doe-see-doed in unison. It sounds corny but it was very cool to watch.

After the show we saw I went down on the dock where they kept the boats and talked to one of the drivers for quite awhile. He showed me how the boat worked and said that the ballet was the hardest thing any of them had done because they had to bob backwards and forwards and roll way over back and forth and spin all in unison. They could hear the music but even though the boats were identical each one responded a little differently.

Watching them work on the booming grounds is fascinating, too, as they zip around butting log bundels or individual logs into place. At Sayward one of the things the guy did with his boat was slide a huge log up on top of and across a raft of logs. He butted the log up against the raft and then started bouncing his boat on the end of the log. Eventually he got it pitching enough to get the other end to come out of the water higher than the outside log on the raft. Timing it just right, he gave the log another big bounce and as the other end came up out of the water he spun his boat and slammed his end of the log with his stern quarter. The other end slid up onto the raft and the driver spun his boat again and pushed the log fast up onto the raft so it was lying on top and across the logs. All in a fraction of the time it took me to type this.

 

[stubones99]

Thanks Marin,

Can I use a couple of your images for my Dictionary of Nautical Terms?

Stu

 

[n36511]

I could have used one of those guys to clear out all of the amateurs from the cove I was anchored in yesterday. It went from three boats to about 100 due to a fireworks show. The little breeze moving across the lake made it a challenge for some to set their anchor. Was comical until one got too close for comfort.

 

[Marin]

Thanks Marin,

Can I use a couple of your images for my Dictionary of Nautical Terms?

Stu

if you like, sure. I'd ask that you credit the photos to me as I own the copyright.

 

[N4712]

That looks like a blast.

 

[bayview]

Are they trawlers?

 

[stubones99]

Thanks Marin,

I'd gladly add credits. Marin the guru on trawlerforum?
PM your particulars if you would.

Stu

 

[Marin]

Thanks Marin,

I'd gladly add credits. Marin the guru on trawlerforum?
PM your particulars if you would.

Stu

I have PM turned off. Just put Photo © C. Marin Faure.

 

[Marin]

For those interested in this kind of thing, here are a few more shots of the sorting operations in Beaver Cove.

First shot gives a sense of the scale of the operation.
Second shot is the banding machine.
Third shot is a bundle of sorted logs coming off the ramp.
The rest of the shots are the boom boat operations.

The last shot shows how these small but very powerful boats (diesel) will almost completely submerge their hulls sometimes depending on what they're pushing and the angle at which they're pushing it.

The other thing that's impressive is how fast the whole operation is. The huge log carriers are zooming and booming around the yard, the sorting machines are slinging logs from one pile to another, the bander wraps up a bundle in less than a minute, and the boom boats zip around like bees. And periodically a big tug shows up and hauls a huge raft out of the cove and off down Johnstone Strait.

 

[Wayfarer]

That looks like a blast.

Sure to be the next 'must have' toy for the mega yacht crowd.

 

[N4712]

Sure to be the next 'must have' toy for the mega yacht crowd.

LOL, yeah I can see it now. Daddy everyone else has one except for us they're only $$$$, daddy please! Still waiting on the water slide, then maybe a boom boat!

 

[Tad Roberts]

Just to clarify a couple of things about boom boats in general. In BC, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska there are two basic types of boom boat in current use.

The first is the boat in the picture below. It's commonly called a Sidewinder, often shortened to "Winder". These are 15'-18' long and have the engine aft, the operator sits in the bow with the hydrostatic 360-degree drive directly under him. Underwater these boats have a flat bottom with a huge keel aft, with the prop in a cage under the bow. They do most of their work with the bow teeth, hooking logs and pushing. The hydrostatic drive allows full thrust in any direction instantly without ever shifting gears.



The second type is called a Dozer Boat, or just a Dozer. Picture below. It has the engine forward and a fixed propeller aft. In this case it is equiped with a steering nozzle, but these boats are intended for more towing and are not as maneuverable as the Winder. The problem with the winder is that it will not go in a straight line for more than 2 secs, so is really troublesome to tow with.

 

[CPseudonym]

Thanks for the explanation Tad. I'd found a dozer style for sale out of BC a year or so ago and thought it would be neat to own. The huge Detroit engine in that tiny boat made me think again and I passed.

It'd definitely turn heads.

 

[kolive]

They are amazing to watch as they do their work. We've seen them several times at the Crofton Mill on our way up to Nanaimo. They are indeed fast and good at what they do! Thanks for the more in depth info on them.

There are a couple of them on display in Madeira Park near the grocery store on the mainland side of the Strait.

 

[Tad Roberts]

Rick Mercer fooling around in a Sidewinder in the second part of this.....

 

[O C Diver]

Rick Mercer fooling around in a Sidewinder in the second part of this.....

Helicopter logging.....learn something new everyday. Thanks for posting it Tad.

Ted

 

[bayview]

Fast? Are they exceeding hull speed without planing?

 

[hmason]

To Marin and others who contributed, thank you for the enlightenment about something I never even knew existed. It's a fascinating view of man/machine interface. This must be one heck of a dangerous workplace. Thanks, Howard

 

[Marin]

Fast? Are they exceeding hull speed without planing?

No. They are fast relative to the kind of work they are doing. Instead of creeping timidly around the logs as a recreational toy boat driver would do they run around pushing and bashing into things as fast as their boats will go.

 

[Marin]

It's a fascinating view of man/machine interface.

I have been fascinated by logging ever since coming across a book in the Honolulu library when I was a little kid called Railroads in the Woods. The year before I moved to the PNW I had visited a friend in southwest Virginia, then flown to Toronto to try to persuade the CBC to hire me, ridden the CP train across Canada, much of the trip in the cab of the locomotive, and rented a car in Vancouver to drive down the coast to visit my mother who lived in Carmel at the time.

While driving on 101 around the Olympic Penninsula I stopped at a roadside store to ask the counter person if she knew if there were any nearby logging operations I could get close to to take pictures. A fellow in the store heard me and said he'd be happy to show me some. As we walked out of the store he asked me if I has a car. I said yes, and he told me to leave it at the store and ride with him. His "ride" tuned out to be a Peterbilt tractor with a Roadrunner logging trailer and 70,000 pounds of logs he was taking to a sort yard near Port Angeles.

I spent the next four days riding with Pat. He and his family live in Forks and he got me a room in a motel that had a trailer I could stay in as everything else in town was full due to the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. He was working a logging side (not site) deep in the mountains and while his truck was being loaded I watched the trees being cut and limbed and yarded up to the tower skidder. Then we'd race down the mountain, sometimes hitting 60 mph on the dirt logging roads, to 101 and the drive north to Port Angeles, unload, and do it again.

All the while Pat was telling me about logging and how log trucks worked. His father had been a log truck driver and Pat had grown up in logging. I had asked him why, as we barreled around curves on 101 with the cab just a few feet away from the cliffs next to the road, the trailer and logs never hit the cliffs. He explained that and everything else about the truck. He even let me drive it, empty with the trailer stacked on the tractor, on the highway and part of the way back up into the mountains.

if I hadn't been fascinated with logging by before I was after that experience. Since moving here I've toured mills, ridden a log train (the only one that's left), and talked to loggers and retired loggers, captains of tugs that haul log rafts and self-loading barges along the BC coast, pilots who fly for logging companies and even a couple of logging company owners.

I find it an absolutely amazing industry, in the machines that are used and the people who use them. I'm sure I would find the mining and oil and steel industries equally fascinating but I don't live where these industries are.

I feel very fortunate in getting to know, at least a little bit, the people responsible for the wood our house is made of.