The Oyster Blog

The official Anderson's Neck blog with progress updates on our mission to Save the Bay One Oyster at a Time. We will notify you when we post new articles if you Join Our Mailing List.

One thing was clear after a year of farming oysters.  We needed a boat.  We only could access the area immediately next to our dock for placing our oysters in off bottom cages.  A boat however, would open up the 300+ acres of oyster grounds we controlled so we could place oyster cages in the best areas for growing.  Namely what we needed was access to hard bottom.  No, I am not referring to buns of steel, that’s the wrong type of hard bottom.  We needed shell substrate or sandy river bottom, so our off-bottom cages wouldn’t burrow into the mud.  We had hard bottom in some areas of our lease, but they were inaccessible without a boat.  So what to do?  Open wallet and buy a boat.  Here we go again…

The first boat that came to mind was a simple Carolina Skiff.  Many waterman use these relatively inexpensive boats and mount a davit crane with a DC power winch to the center via some MacGyver jerry-rigging.   The fiberglass of the hull takes a beating over time however, and the boats tend to look worn out in a relative short period of time given the rough love they endure on an oyster farm.

Another option was to buy a flat bottomed commercial work boat.  Unfortunately, these flat bottomed boats are almost always custom designed and would therefore be very expensive.  Flat bottomed boats also aren’t very good in bad weather.  We have extremely choppy seas on the York River at times which would mean we couldn’t work on even moderately windy days.  Plus, I would have to deal with the enormous logistical headaches of finding a builder and spending a ton of time outlining the exact design specifications over the course of a year or more to have the thing built.  No thanks.  I already had what seemed like an endless list of logistical challenges to sort through.  Getting into the boat design/build business was not a project I wanted to add to the ever growing list of things I didn’t know a thing about but had to figure out in short order.

When Wilson and I went to the Ocean City, MD conference we saw an aluminum SeaArk jon boat that had a diamond tread floor.  The boat had a flat surface to work within the boat, yet the hull wasn’t flat bottomed.  So it could handle some modest weather when it started kicking up on the river.  Given I wasn’t going to be running the York on extremely windy days in this thing, but it seemed to have much better welding and construction than a simple Carolina Skiff shell.  I was worried however, that at low tide, the outboard motor might cause me problems.  Our tidal flats are extremely shallow.  I didn’t want to fuss with constantly tilting the motor or accidentally hitting a cage with a propeller.  Then I saw SeaArk had a variation on their hull design for an outboard jet motor.  I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but it sounded great.  No props or tilting were required with a jet. I might even be able to run up the small creeks at low tide with this thing. That sounded just like what the doctor ordered.

I called up the salesman from the conference and told him what I was thinking.  He couldn’t agree more about the benefits of jet motors as they were really beginning to make inroads in the market.  He emailed me pricing and offered to answer any more questions.  I did a little more digging and that is when I found the SeaArk Predator.  So this might be a guy thing, so ladies please excuse me for the moment of blatant testosterone indulgence.  You have the right to indulge in shoes, us guys have oyster jet boats.  Well OK, most guys don’t have oyster jet boats, but I was about to become an avid admirer of the SeaArk Predator nonetheless.  There are multiple iterations of this style of inboard jet boat.  SeaArk makes the basic version and several boat builders customize the design for Alaskan hunting outfitters, military/police applications down in South America, and for good old fashioned redneck “Amorican” entertainment.  These good old boys don’t really need an inboard jet boat to go bass fishing, but they buy it anyways.  They typically purchase said boat shortly after splitting up with their high school girlfriend and mother of their children, move out of the shared trailer, and settle in to the RV park for a lifetime of adventures with Bubba the hunting dog.  Here is a video of what some of these extremely bored individuals do for fun with their souped-up jet boats.

WARNING: DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO IF YOU HAVE A WEAK STOMACH, SWEAR WORDS OFFEND YOU, OR GENERALLY YOU JUST SIMPLY DON’T FIND IT HUMOROUS TO WATCH REDNECKS DO STUPID THINGS.  HOWEVER IF YOU HAVE A STRONG STOMACH, ENJOY HEARING SWEARWORDS, OR ARE AMUSED WHEN WATCHING REDNECK BEHAVIOR, PLEASE PROCEED.

So after seeing that tidbit of ridiculous hillbilly goodness, I figured that I probably could get around the mud flats on the York River quite well with this boat.  If I bought the slightly larger 22 foot version, mounted the steering console on the side, and installed a davit crane with a DC winch, I might even be able to raise some oyster cages.  So I called the SeaArk Salesman and told him to write up the purchase ticket and send it to me for review.  That night I made the down payment for the Predator along with the custom installation of my davit crane and winch.  All was right with the world.

Unfortunately, it ultimately took 5 months for the marina to receive shipment of the boat from the factory and to finally finish installing the davit crane.  The crane installation required “ripping up the floor” of the boat (that’s boat salesman talk for unscrewing the screws that hold the floor in place), bracing the davit crane plate to the structure of the hull, and drilling a couple holes in the floor to mount the plate.  That ultimately cost me 6 times more than what I was quoted for the work when I originally bought the boat.  Nonetheless, I got it done and drove up to Pennsylvania to pick up my new purchase with cashier’s check in hand for the remainder of the balance.  Luckily Laura agreed to go along with me as my co-pilot.  I tempted her with promises of a Friday night dinner at Hank’s Oyster Bar in Alexandria, Virginia on the way.  That did the trick.  Hank’s is an awesome place to sample a variety of Eastern and Pacific oysters.  We happily slurped away two dozen as a starter before moving on to our main course.

We had not booked a hotel in advance of our trip.  We figured any old Holiday Inn or Best Western would do when we got tired of driving.  For some strange reason we decided to be overachievers and drive all the way to our destinationin in Pennsylvania that night.  We learned upon arriving that we had just landed in touristville.  That is Hershey, PA  to be precise.  We walked into the only hotel we could find that had any vacancies, a Best Western.  The woman behind the desk proceeded to inform us it was going to cost us $260 a night.  Wow, that was pricey for a bed bug infested, kiddie swarmed, Chlorine reeking, wayside hotel.  Too tired to look for a different place, we grumbled, paid, and went to bed.

The next morning we settled up with the Marina and drove the boat all the way back to Virginia through Washington, DC Beltway madness with a boat in tow.  That was no fun especially when idiots would cut in front of my truck in stop and go traffic to gain 5 feet improvement from their current lane’s position.  Then they would act surprised when my 6,000+ pound truck with boat trailer/boat had a little trouble stopping without riding up their keesters.  That got old after 3 plus hours.  So we took the back roads the rest of the way through rural Virginia and tried to avoid traffic as best we could.

We finally got back to The Neck late that Sunday night and dropped off the boat.  We grabbed some dinner and headed back to Richmond.  Unfortunately after waiting 5 months and successfully getting the boat back, we didn’t get to take it for a spin.  I was also leaving in a couple days for my Brother Ben’s Air Force Major pinning ceremony in Panama City, Florida through the following weekend.  The next few weeks were followed by lots of work and preparations for a family trip to Italy.  In other words, the inaugural first ride in the boat was nowhere close.  Other priorities were delaying our maiden voyage.  At least we had safely accepted and transported our boat to the farm.  On to the myriad of other problems to solve so we could expand our operations and finally begin harvesting our oysters!

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