Campbell River Mirror, Wednesday December 22, 2004

Close quarters: Glenn Ashby, vice-chair of the Maritime Heritage Society, crouches in the bow of the BCP45 fishing boat, currently being reconstructed and renovated inside the Maritime Heritage Centre. The small area where Ashby is crouching originally held four bunks for the fishing boat's crew.

Happy hull days

The restoration of the historic BCP 45 an enjoyable challenge
Grant Warkentin
Mirror Staff

Volunteers restoring the historic BCP 45 fishing boat are continually challenged but not discouraged by the ongoing project.

"We're trying to keep as much of the original construction as possible, but some of it needs a lot of work," says Glenn Ashby, vice-chair of the Maritime Heritage Society. "I don't think anyone had a concept of the previous condition of the boat."

Ashby says that while most of the historical fishing boat looked solid on the surface, once volunteers started taking it apart to begin restoration work, the truth came out.

"It looked fine on the surface but it was powdery undernearth, " he says of the baot's decking, which had deteriorated after decades enduring B.C. storms and seas.

The fishing boat, built for B.C. Packers in 1927, plied the waters around Campbell River for decades, becoming famous when a picture of the seiner taken in 1958 was used on the $5 bill between 1973-1986. The BCP 45 was retired from service in 1995. The boat is now the centrepiece of the Maritime Heritage Centre and, once it is restored, will be a tourist attraction, heritage site and point of pride for the entire community.

However, as volunteers have discovered, restoration is becoming reconstruction. The deteriorated decking was only part of the problem. In the past year, the ribs of the boat have been replaced, along with bulk-heads, gunwales, the stern and parts of the sides. There's still a lot of work to be done — Ashby estimates that it may take another year of restoration work before the boat is finished.

However, thanks to the expertise of retired shipbuilder Buford Haines, the work is both educational and enjoyable, Ashby says, explaining that working alongside Haines is like taking an introductory course in shipbuilding. Haines has shown the volunteer reconstructionists many tricks of the trade, from steaming the boards in a custom wooden box to make them more flexible, to custom-cutting pieces to fit the boat's unique curves, to making the ship's crucial curved ribs by gluing several thin planks together, making ribs stronger than a single piece of wood. The ship will never touch the sea again, but once it is finished, it could certainly float.

The reconstructionists goal is to rebuild the ship to the way it was configured when its famous photo was taken in 1958. They have a found an engine like the 120 horsepower Buta diesel engine the boat was using in 1958, which will be installed once the boat's lower deck has been rebuilt. They also plan to rebuild the deck to the configuration of a table seiner instead of a hydraulic boat with drums for its nets, which it had become by the time it was retired. The volunteers haven't spent much time restoring the boat's cabin yet, but Ashby is hopeful it wouldn't need too much work.

There is some rot and they have to figure out what kind of navigational instruments the boat would have been using in 1958, but Ashby is confident it won't be too difficult to renovate.

The best thing is how much of a community effort it has been, Ashby says. The reconstruction work wouldn't have been possible without all the wood donated by Weyerhaeuser and TimberWest, he adds, nor without the help of Ron Bohn and his custom sawmill in Black Creek. Bohn is also involved in the ongoing restoration work.

It also wouldn't have been possible without the help of Ashby, Haines, Sean Crowhurst and even some high-school age volunteers who come in to help when they can. Ashby says it's a great experience for the students to be able to work side by side with an experienced shipbuilder as Haines.

"Just to be around a guy like Buford has to be worth its weight in gold," he says.