| FORESTRY~~HANDLOGGING~~BEACHCOMBING |
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When I was younger my world was the coastal inlets of the British Columbia 'mid-coastal' region. I succeded my Father Hilton Spellman, who logboomed, towed, logged, etc around the Mid Coast from 1949--1990 he is well known in the area. Bella Coola BC was my home and port starting in 1967 when I started going out on the tugboats and later deckhanding in 1972.Beechcombing was a method of collecting tree's that mother nature knocked over by rain and wind with some seismic motion thrown in. also back in the days when wood from logging camps was watered in "single log form" as opposed to a bundle of logs held togeather with steel cable, logs would be lost out of the booms because of wind, tide and storms. The basic idea of beachcombing is that you have a small tug boat of 40ft in lenght or less and you drive along looking for tree's or logs. If you found a log you would put a rope on it and "jerk" the log off the beach into the water. Sometimes this jerking method would require waiting until the tide had rising to its height for that day. My father took me out Handlogging with the B32 tugboat he had in 1972, after 25 yrs there was practically no inlet in the mid coast which we did not hand log. Handlogging with boats was a selective logging process that targeted mostly 3 to 10 ft diameter Western red Cedar, Sitka Spruce and Douglas Fir tree's which grow in the area. We logged about 3 to 5,000m3 per year, not much when you consider British Columbia's logging yearly cuts about 70million m3 per year. It was like an old Pioneering lifestyle only out in the coastal inlets of British Columbia, you could go 2 weeks and not see another boat out on the water, so you had to love solitude. There were no radio communications much until the Vhf radios became affordable in the 1980's. As of today that lifestyle has about 98% dissapeared. The photo of the 32ft coastal tug boat "Glacier #1" as seen above, was taken in 1987. That year I had a section of steel added to the bow to better break the waves. I "submarined"this tug boat in the heavy westerly swells running up Burke Channel towards Mesachie Nose, Near Bella Coola. The bow addition helped prevent this happening. This tugboat had a cabin constructed of 2/4 yellow cedar framing covered by marine plywood. The house as the cabin is sometimes called was anchored to the steel hull very securely, it was a good thing as the submarineing has a tendency to wipe it away from the steel hull!! By the way the tug was powered by a very fuel effecient and quiet running 6cyl catapillar diesel engine and ran a 38 inch propellor at 3:1 reduction. |