• slideshow120612-001
    The Fortune Amaryllis, a bulk carrier built in Japan in 2008 and whose home port is Hong Kong, was stranded last week in Eureka with dead engines. The Chinese crew members don’t have U.S. visas, so Leroy Zerlang, who’s the ship’s local agent, brought them Chinese food from the Far East Cafe for their first meal in port. He says they liked it. The next day, once a generator was brought aboard, they were able to fire their galley back up.
  • slideshow120612-002
    The 58-foot High Sea, owned by Roger Carl, was built in 1971. It’s one of the boats built by Crescent City company Fashion Blacksmith to replace the fishing fleet savaged by the tsunami that struck Crescent City’s harbor in 1964.
  • slideshow120612-003
    Cody Hills, who grew up on Humboldt Bay, is a tug boat operator, boat-repairer and local bay history afficionado.
  • slideshow120612-004
    The Arcturus, made of riveted iron like the Titanic, was first named the Westdahl. It was built in 1929 in Portland, Ore., for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. It charted waters off the Pacific Coast and Alaska until 1946. (See the NOAA Photo Library, online, for historic images of the Westdahl at work in icy waters.)
  • slideshow120612-005
    The Coast and Geodetic Survey Ship Westdahl in front of Alaska’s Taku Glacier, 1937.
  • slideshow120612-006
    The Terron, a still-active commercial fishing boat, was built in 1927 at the old Anderson and Cristofani shipyard in San Francisco. The small wood boat’s tidy, decorative lines make many on the bay sigh.
  • slideshow120612-007
    The Stephanie, a former trawler built in 1917 in San Francisco by Genoa Boat Works, is the second oldest boat on the bay (the Madaket’s the oldest). Cody Hills is slowly restoring it.
  • slideshow120612-008
    The Stephanie, a former trawler built in 1917 in San Francisco by Genoa Boat Works, is the second oldest boat on the bay (the Madaket’s the oldest). Cody Hills is slowly restoring it.
  • slideshow120612-009
    Retired Humboldt State University oceanography professor (he founded the program) J.A. Gast, with help from friends and family, built this boat in 1989 on the Samoa Peninsula. He wanted to use it for instruction, but never quite finished it. It sits in the Woodley Island Marina.
  • slideshow120612-010
    Is this rotting fin of wood planks really one of Jack London’s old boats? Only the egret knows.

Heidi Walters worked as a staff writer at the North Coast Journal from 2005 to 2015.