Twister

Thanks to Lorne Finalyson for the photos and information about the troller Twister.

I was the owner of the troller Twister from 1985 until it was de-licensed and sold in 1998. A subsequent owner abandoned it and it lay on the beach in Baynes Sound, just above the Fanny Bay Wharf, until storms and tides broke it up. There is little or nothing left of it. I had stripped it completely as it lay in the Courtenay Slough, except for leaving the automatic bilge pumps and batteries aboard, as well as the shaft and wheel. I sold it to a fellow who hung around the wharf, but that is another story.

 

I had bought the vessel from the bailiffs, and had no idea of its origin. Then, one afternoon in about 1994, I swung into the wharf at Port Hardy and an older fellow took my lines. He peered at the bow, and then the stern, and pronounced the Twister to be a Wahl boat. He said he caulked boats for the Wahl brothers for years, and figured he may have caulked this one. He said one could tell it was Wahl double ender by the curve at the bow and the stern. I figured that, if this was the case, Twister had been built as a gillnetter. No, he said, for the gillnetters were smaller, in the 30' range, and Twister was 33'6". It had been built as a troller.

 

Later, during the sockeye troll fishery off of Pine Island I saw another boat just outside of me with the same bow and stern lines, and the same size as Twister. It was named Salal.

 

From what I have been able to find out, Twister had been built in 1940 and had been outfitted with a Vivian gas engine. When I got it, power came from a worn out Chrysler Crown gas engine.

Coward's Cove, below Point Grey, on the North Arm of the Fraser when we had travelled down for our first sockeye troll fishery on the River. We had purchased the vessel the previous December through Comox Valley Bailiffs. The original hull lines show up very well, but the wheelhouse had been altered sometime along the way. Those forward tilting windows are a relatively recent innovation on fishing vessels.

Johnstone Strait, 1990. The vessel is going up cod fishing in May or June of that year. The trip was a bust, sadly enough. You'll note that the poles were down, even when running. That boat was so tippy that having poles down stabilized it somewhat. More important, if the wind switched and came from the stern then the stabilizers would have to be thrown into the water to hold the vessel from rolling almost uncontrollably. In a following sea Twister was well named! I'm told that was caused by its very deep forefoot. A wave would come from the stern, lifting it. Then the boat would slide forward on the wave and the forefoot would dig into the water, sort of holding it there as the wave moved along, throwing the vessel one way or the other. That same forefoot would slice into the waves if one were bucking into them, but from the stern, or on the quarter, that boat could be frightening in its gyrations. Thank heavens for stabilizers.

Lorne Finlayson, 2010