Anybody have a picture of the M/V SunMar Sea when she was orange and still had portholes? I spent a couple good years aboard but haven’t got a good picture. The Coastal Sea is her after SunMar folded. Signed on just after they wiped the crank bearings out of the old MaK. Got to do the rebuild with factory rep. who had been an attendant at the plant when the engine was as built in 1955.
She was mentioned earlier in gCaptain.
I Have some old video tape the mate shot on board when she went to Russia, I’ll see what I can do
P54davison has probably fallen of the cliff…
Yeah, gone. I wanted to gloat about the time we towed the Sunmar Sea in Alaska but anyway, I doubt if the OP was there at the time.
p54 here, sailed as C/E ‘86-‘89 and was always under our own power. The SunMar Sea was involved in a collision but I wasn’t o/b at the time. Rejoined in shipyard in Vancouver. Ever trip was an adventure, made special Christmas delivery to Nome, their winter beer supply!!
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I believe that the SUNMAR SEA later became the COASTAL SEA. The last time I saw her was in the Yukon River about 7 years ago. She was loading frozen salmon at the Kwikpak Fisheries plant in Emmonak. The Captain said it was her last trip and that she was being retired. I don’t know what became of her after that. Maybe @freighterman1 will jump in and tell us.
Is this the vessel in question? Last known as M/V COURAGEOUS (2015):
Nothing said about her whereabouts after that.
That’s her as the COASTAL SEA.
Originally M/V Homborsud, Swedish built, Norwegian flagged., 1956.
I remember seeing the Sunmar Sea back when she had her previous name, Rodsand (ex-Hoborsund), around 1986. She was originall built in Amel, Sweden in 1956, and spent much of her time under the German flag, hauling gravel around Europe.
An international fish broker, Hans Mauritzen, active in the Alaska fishing industry, decided he wanted his own Aleutian freight line. He bought Rodsand in a U.S. Marshal sale in 1985. Probably not for much, because the 30-year old boat was in rough shape. Hauling gravel will do that to you,
Now the first boat of Mauritzen’s new Sunmar Shipping Line, she was radically altered at Marco Shipyards in Seattle. Her entire hull forward of the engineroom bulkhead was cut off and scrapped. A new forebody was built at Marco and attached. Why this was done was always a mystery to us freighter types, because the engine room was primitive and underpowered. The living accommodations, located in the old section, were spartan, and the wheelhouse a throwback to the 19th century. The forebody was wider than the aft body. The resulting “step” in her hull was another reason the vessel was so slow. Hydrodynamic forces resulted in a loss of 1.5 knots.
CTI bought the boat in August 1993. Around 1995, the MAK engine was replaced by a Caterpillar, and the “step” faired in, changing her sea speed from about 8.5 knots to 12. Her cargo hold refrigeration was switched from a blast system to coils, and later her wheelhouse was replaced. Also, her bizarre cargo gear rigging and control was altered to the far more efficient CTI pattern. After this she made a reliable, if quirky, coastal freighter.
She was part of what we called the old fleet. Every year made her that much smaller for our operations. At the end she was only making a few voyages a year. She did find a niche in our Yukon River operations. The bar across the Yukon makes having a light draft a handy thing, and she was small enough to cross the bar on a regular basis. But old ships demand a lot of costly maintenance, and around that time we built a new, much bigger, ship. Coastal Sea’s last trip with us was October of 2014.
We donated her to Friend Ships Unlimited, a Christian relief agency using ships to deal with humanitarian emergencies in the Caribbean and Central America. We did the same thing with another boat, Coastal Pilot (ex-Mokuhana).
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Isn’t Coastal Sea tied up by Ballard Oil? Or what’s left of it?
Capt Doug made one trip on there and then got fired. His story was the reason he was fired was that he’d told one of his buddies on the MF/HF that the ship was a “pig” and his boss got word.
I don’t know, they hired me to run the gear when they loaded for a northbound on the Duwamish waterway that trip, seemed to me he was getting kind of a frosty reception from the crew.
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I have many fond memories of my time as chief on the Coastal Sea, none I care to experience again but fond nonetheless.
Good people, good runs, not necessarily the greatest boat but a good company.
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Did that ship have CPP?
Didn’t she have an opposed piston diesel?
Rentges, original equipment. No clutch, pull the air start and it was spinning. If I remember correctly we pulled the shaft BBC and wheel when docked in Vancouver for repairs. Pretty much all the original equipment was operational, a 6/71 generator, lube oil centrifuge, big reciprocating bilge/ballast. Sabroe ductless refrigeration and parallel Cat generators and a Marco drive bow thruster with 4 oil pumps.
MaK 8 cylinder turbo, pistons like 5 gallon buckets and rods the size of your legs. Open push rods and hand oiled top end. Direct air start, throttle was local control with voice tube to to wheelhouse, pitch control was chain and cable linkage.
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Don’t forget the engine driven reciprocating bilge pump.
I may have mentioned it in a post a few years back but I could see the engine room through the rust hole in the deck of my stateroom, just had to move the little piece of carpet and the cardboard insulation.
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