Special Guest: Sundog Charters

Colin Doherty from Sundog Charters joins us to reveal the thrills of pioneering fuel delivery throughout Alaska's secluded communities. As we chart the course of Sundog Charters' evolution, we uncover the meticulous dance with regulations and nature's whims that underpin the lifeblood of Alaskan remote delivery. Colin crafts a vivid picture of the strategic pivot from utilizing DOT-regulated trucks to direct deck tank pumping—a move spurred by regulatory pressures and a staunch dedication to environmental stewardship. Our candid conversation ebbs and flows through the challenges, unveiling the company's collaboration with ADEC in fortifying oil spill prevention—a lighthouse guiding the way in risk aversion. Strap in for an auditory expedition that celebrates the people and the spirit that pulses through the veins of the Last Frontier.

Additional Resources:
Sundog Charters, LLC

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal or regulatory advice. We are not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may occur from using this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional regulatory or legal advice, and the views expressed in this podcast may not be those of the host, which would be me or Integrity Environmental. Thank you very much for listening. We would be happy to provide professional regulatory advice as part of our consulting services if you need professional regulatory advice. 

Transcript

Shannon: 0:43

Good morning, welcome to season two of Tank Talk. I'm here today with Colin Daugherty from Sundog Charters and we're going to talk about a really unique form of field delivery that exists in the state of Alaska, and I am so pleased that Colin is joining us this morning to talk about it, because I really appreciate that it solved a high-risk activity with a really unique solution and I'm excited to go down the road that Colin and his team went through to obtain that safer method of delivery. And Colin and I have known each other for a really long time, all the way back when I worked with the state of Alaska, I think he and I, if I'm remembering right, Colin, we did a spill drill in Dutch Harbor many moons ago.

Colin: 1:23

Yeah, I think I have memories of Dutch Harbor and maybe Dillingham, Bristol Bay, for you know, could have been a hub visit. Maybe you were visiting one of the member Chadux member companies.

Shannon: 1:37

Colin, could you briefly introduce yourself, tell us about yourself and then sort of give us a brief history of Sundog Charters? Because obviously when I met you we were working with Shadow, which is now the Shadow network, but at some point you split off. So tell us a little bit about your background and how Sundog Charters came to be.

Colin: 1:54

Okay, well, thanks, and yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, I worked for Alaska Chadux back starting in 2006 through 2015. I was a mariner, has been have been a mariner since the mid 90s. I moved from the Midwest, where I grew up, down to the Virgin Islands.

Shannon: 2:17

Don't know why I left, but were you, were you a mariner in Minnesota, though Is there a lot of marine environments in Minnesota.

Colin: 2:26

Chicago. So I started great boarding on the Great Lakes and I thought I'd take a break from the winter time and but down in the Virgin Islands I got involved with a dive group, a commercial diving outfit that did a lot of work at the refinery there, the Hovenza refinery. So that's how I got into the oil industry and then eventually got a job as a captain on an OSRV at the refinery. So that's how I I segwayed into spill response.

Shannon: 2:56

So hold on. So for our listeners that are not as familiar, osrv is oil spill response vessel.

Colin: 3:01

Yes, so 110 foot vessel equipped with spill response gear, kind of ready to go and because of the regulations. But yeah, my wife and I got tired of all the perfect weather and decided to move to Alaska and Shadow was looking for a spill tech and and I had, you know, a little experience now working for an OSRO and oil spill removal organization. So that's how I came to Alaska, was working for Alaska Chadux, although I had done a little bit of work in Alaska prior, which got me working in Prince William Sound on a tour boat, but I also worked for Peregrine Marine. Oh, yeah.

Colin: 3:50

And they build bow pickers. That's Jeff Johnson. But Jeff Johnson is kind of the landing craft at least the smaller aluminum landing craft guru in Alaska. So I really learned a lot about him. And I also met Delbert Henry working for Peregrine and he's my now partner with Sun og Charters.

Shannon: 4:14

So tell me, tell me more about Sun og Charters. I'm familiar with your group because you do a lot of work out of Homer and Kodiak, but you also serve many of the communities along the way. So maybe just sort of describe what Sun og is and how it got started.

Colin: 4:29

Yeah. So we started in 2015 and I by then had become a little burned out with the spill industry just the phone calls at three in the morning, you know. It was nothing. I really enjoyed working for Chadux and but I wanted to get back to being a mariner, wanted to get back a little more hands on working on the water. So Delbert Henry and I started Sun og in 2015 with a 42 foot Peregrine landing craft. We wanted to focus on serving industry with planning craft because we wanted to work jobs that were remote, because we just wanted to do, you know, the hardest thing possible.

Shannon: 5:12

It's a good niche market, isn't it?

Colin: 5:15

Yeah, well it is. It's a niche market. We go to areas that are unimproved, they don't necessarily have docs, they don't have a lot of infrastructure, and that's really the usefulness of these landing craft they can pull up on a beach and drop the bow door and offload without a dock. So we started doing this in 2015 and focused on Cook Inlet, and our first big job was the LNG project. We supported geotechnical and geophysical research and Cook Inlet. You know, that project didn't really go very far and some of the Cook Inlet worked dried up, so we had to pivot and in 2017, we were approached by Dean Andrew, who runs an air service out in Kodiak.

Colin: 6:06

And he's also married to Alicia Andrew, who's the tribal president of C.

Shannon: 6:13

L

Colin: 6:14

And they own a landing craft in the LCM-8, the Retriever, and I knew of the boat. It was something. It was a boat we hired when I was with Chadux for an incident.

Colin: 6:27

So they asked if we'd run the boat for them, and at that point we hadn't delivered fuel. It's not something we had done, but that's the purpose of their. That's why they had the retriever to supply the village with fuel. So we thought it would be a good opportunity. We didn't know quite what we were getting into, but we started to run the retriever and again, I had been to Kodiak through Chadux, so we ran the boat for them and that's how we got into the bigger LCM-8s.

Shannon: 7:01

They're called their ex-military landing craft and again, that's how we started delivering to so those larger vessels at one point were constructed for and used for like Coast Guard service, and then are decommissioned at some point and sold for private use.

Colin: 7:16

Yeah, mostly the Army. Army has more vessels than the Navy and a lot of them are these smaller inland vessels. So right now we have a boat, an LCM-8, that was built for the Army. We've got another one that was built for the Navy. But their ex-military boats and they're tough and they're shallow draft and they're perfect for Alaska. Yeah, they just fit a need in these unimproved villages, so they're perfect.

Shannon: 7:52

And for our less nautical listeners, the shallow draft is important because without a improved harbor or dock it's not deep enough for some of these bigger vessels, like oil barges, to be able to pull up and deliver fuel, correct or deliver cargo either probably.

Colin: 8:07

Yeah, we only draft maybe four or five feet of water so we can get into a shallow beach and drop the bow door and the bow door actually lands on the beach and we can drive on and off with our cargo when bigger boats they can't quite get in all the way to the beach.

Shannon: 8:28

I'm not entirely sure, but I feel like an oil barge has maybe nine foot of draft or more. It's a lot deeper. You could probably tell me more about that, but I feel like, having done research for where they could go for portages. For some of our clients I think nine feet is the minimum and they prefer much deeper Right.

Colin: 8:47

so, yeah, we're just a kind of a different animal. We go to these places and we're not bringing much compared to these big tankers or barges, but we're filling the need of a smaller customer in a smaller area.

Shannon: 9:04

But what you're bringing is very critical because I'm guessing if it doesn't come via your landing craft it's gonna be flown in at five X the cost or 10 X the cost.

Colin: 9:12

So critical stuff it is and for us it's kind of the reward. It's very gratifying to bring cargo and now fuel to these areas that really have no other way of doing it or doing it affordably. So we really enjoy doing this and it's just refreshing to have happy customers people who really need you versus just overhead. So it's been a breath of fresh air.

Shannon: 9:47

So you've got several vessels. Now Do you wanna give me a rundown of what you've got, like what are the, what types of vessels and what are their names, cause I like to know names of things.

Colin: 9:56

So we have the Mimery, and that's the boat that started it all. That's our little 42 foot aluminum peregrine and it took us a while to figure out what we were and early on we realized we didn't wanna be a water taxi service. We wanted to be more industry based and that boat is great for supporting dive operations or geophysical, hydrographic kind of work, towing surveyor equipment.

Colin: 10:30

But it's, it's you know, it doesn't go super fast because it's jets and it can only haul 8,000 pounds, so it's not a big freight hauler. So it's just, you know, it's a tool that suits some jobs. But again, it's where we start.

Shannon: 10:46

It's a pretty valuable tool. I would have given my left arm many times for that exact vessel in summer, but Western Alaska locations where we were doing remediation type work or site characterization, Because you're right, those vessels make things that are not possible possible. They really are like a little Swiss Army knife. You can use them for almost anything except heavy duty work.

Colin: 11:06

Right, they're, yeah, they're the SUV of the water, yeah. So we kind of graduated up, we leased the retriever, that's the LCM-8. And then we were fortunate enough to find another LCM-8, the supplier. So we own the supplier now and we still deliver to Karluck with our vessel. And then, most recently, we bought the transporter very fancy names supplier.

Shannon: 11:38

I was gonna say I feel like there's no imagination when you guys name things.

Colin: 11:44

No, we're just telling people what we do with our names.

Shannon: 11:49

It's a smart tactic.

Colin: 11:50

But both those vessels are the LCM-8s. They're 72 foot overall landing ground.

Shannon: 11:57

That's a pretty long boat 72 feet.

Colin: 12:00

Yeah so our original boat, the Mimery, can fit on the deck of the supplier.

Shannon: 12:08

So yeah, have you done that? Have you actually put it on the deck, have you?

Colin: 12:13

actually done that and put it on the deck. We haven't, we haven't had need, but I think that would be neat to have them stacked up like that.

Shannon: 12:21

It would. So it sounds like as your business developed, like we all do I'm a small business owner as well You're sort of path finding which will suit your clients needs the best and where the best fit is for what you like and enjoy and are passionate about and where the real need is. So once you determine this need, it sounds like fuel was an integral part of that. So what could you talk to us about delivering fuel and what some of the challenges were before you went down the path? I know you went down Because delivering fuel over Alaska in situations exactly like you described, where there is no dock or deep water access, that's a challenge our whole state faces. So maybe talk about that piece of it, yeah.

Colin: 13:04

So, and definitely the fuel delivery has been a trial and error of sorts or do something and then figure out what works, what doesn't work. When we first started delivering fuel, we were using a fuel truck it was probably a decommissioned shore side petroleum truck and putting it on deck and going off to our sites and rolling it off the boat down the beach and over to the tanks wherever they are.

Shannon: 13:40

Basically doing a remote truck delivery, but using the landing craft to take it between where there was non-road access, taking it from where there was a road access, like Homer, to a community where there were no roads accessing it.

Colin: 13:52

Okay, right, and that's perfectly fine, and the truck becomes it's just cargo, roll on, roll off cargo, but the truck itself, I mean the truck itself, weighs 14,000 pounds.

Shannon: 14:06

Is it 14,000 pounds empty or 14,000 with the fuel on it?

Colin: 14:09

14,000 pounds empty and our boats have a capacity of 80,000 pounds, so it takes up a good amount of our capacity. You know, a truck sits higher centered than, say, a deck tank so you have any free surface effect and this tank is sitting up on a chassis so you can actually feel it's sloshing around. It's baffled but it's still. But, still yeah.

Shannon: 14:36

Yeah, yes, I know very well what you're talking about.

Colin: 14:40

Yeah, it's a little unnerving. I think right around the time I started I left Shadow there was a landing craft in Kachemak Bay that had a fuel truck on its shift and had a spill, had an incident. Because, yeah, they're fine if they're sitting center, but if that truck moves over some all of a sudden, you can't recover, you're listed over and it's a bad scene.

Shannon: 15:06

Yep, the center of gravity flips it correct, it just tips it over.

Colin: 15:11

Yeah, you know we wanted to get away from the trucks and we wanted to get more reliant on deck tanks and they still you have to take care with them as well. But they sit lower, they have their less weight. But the trucks rolling them on, rolling them off through the intertidal zone kind of scared me because if that truck got stuck rolling off the boat and then the tide came up it would be a bad scene.

Shannon: 15:39

This is the part of Alaska where I feel like I don't think people outside of Alaska understand the challenges that we face, because what you're describing is expert level truck driving, expert level vessel handling, expert level local knowledge of tide, weather and the shore conditions. Right, you need to know what kind of actual gravel you're driving it on, because it's going to be soft in some places and hard in others, and all of that happens very routinely and a huge amount of time. We have such great people working in Alaska that it works, but for those few times that it doesn't work. That's why we have these incidents that kind of go sideways so fast because there's no margin for error or there's very little margin for error, and I know for just from my experience loading and unloading cargo anytime you drive something on and off, that's an increased risk of it being off balance because the boat shifts or the truck shifts because nothing's secured yet Right, like you said, it's the beach, but it's also the effect of the cargo coming on and off on the boat itself.

Colin: 16:43

So we wanted to find a way to mitigate that risk, to lower it. And also, we're not truck people I don't have truck mechanics on staff and boy the saltwater. We tarp up our cargo, but the saltwater just eats up, breaks and it's hard on equipment. So here we are rolling it up and down a ramp and what's going to happen? So yeah, we just wanted to get out of that world. We wanted to get out of the DOT world and find a better way.

Shannon: 17:17

And when you refer to the DOT world you're referring to the DOT regulations that say if the truck's DOT regulated it's got its own set of tightness testing and certifications to make sure that the vessel of the tank truck is tight and leak-proof. But that comes with maintenance and regulation and testing and all of those pieces.

Colin: 17:38

Right, and that's not us. We're a small company and we're focusing on boats and landing craft. I didn't have the capacity to learn DOT rules and find DOT drivers, so keep it simple.

Shannon: 17:52

We have stayed out of the DOT lane as well, because it is a whole big highway of things you gotta know.

Colin: 17:59

Right. So we decided we wanted to start pumping from deck tanks to shore and we knew we needed ODPCP Oil discharge prevention and contingency plan.

Colin: 18:16

Yes, that we knew we needed that. Yes, and we went to ADEC and we explained to them just what we've been talking about that we think it's a little bit how should we put it sketchy, running these trucks on and off? Or we think it comes with a lot of risk and we want to find a better way to do it. We want to pump from the boat, which has its own risk, but you mitigate it, you put in prevention measures.

Shannon: 18:47

But you're stuck because it's not a full barge. So a lot of the things that come with a full-size barge there's a lot of protections and compartments, but this is a 72-foot landing craft and, for reference, an oil barge would be, I think, well over 200 feet in length, right, I mean, it'd be more than double this length to meet the minimums for barges. Yeah, so this is, even though it seems large when you're standing next to it on the dock, it's still a small craft and there's not room or place, and they're not really. You're doing something new, right? You're trying to get into the places you can get into with this craft, but it's not really designed for fuel delivery yet, right? So what did the state say.

Colin: 19:27

You know, they were receptive and they listened to us, but actually at first they wanted to know why. Why do you want to do this? So we kind of had to explain to them that we need this to be able to pump over water not only at the delivery site but even at the fuel dock. Anybody is filling up, even drums or tanks that are on board, and they're doing it at a fuel dock. Well, that's not covered by the facility response plan. You can fill your own tanks on board to, you know, to power your engines, but that's different than filling cargo tanks.

Shannon: 20:08

It is and it runs sideways.

Colin: 20:10

So we had to explain to ADEC that well, I don't think we can do this legally without an ODPCP. But they were pretty enthusiastic about it, about helping us do it the right way. You know, they didn't throw up roadblocks. We had to go through the process, and so we had to have a plan written and go through the public review process. But all things considered, I think it was fairly painless.

Shannon: 20:37

And this is an ODPCP for vessels in particular, because there's different rules. Previously in this podcast, we have stuck to land-based facilities, but now we're moving over into the vessel requirements of the same regulation, and anytime you're transferring fuel over water or delivering fuel for retail instead of individual consumption, and even sometimes when you're consuming it as a vessel, if you're large enough, there are requirements to have a sea plan in place or this ODPCP from the state. So that's half the piece, though, because I bet the Coast Guard had some thoughts about this as well.

Colin: 21:10

The state was probably just thrust up right, well, right, and you know, talk about us kind of figuring it out as we went along. I kind of thought we got the ODPCP in place. We're good because our state plan is for 9,000 gallons, or 217 barrels, which is it's nothing. It's tiny compared to these big barges and from my oil spill response days I knew that well, all these mini barges that they use for spill response, they're all built to 249 barrels.

Shannon: 21:49

Yes, because there's a 250 barrel cutoff right.

Colin: 21:52

Exactly, there's manning requirements. After 249 or 250 barrels you need tankermen and we're under that level.

Shannon: 22:02

So I thought oh, we're good.

Colin: 22:04

You know we're under a trigger or a level that triggers more regulations. Well, I was wrong.

Shannon: 22:14

How was the Coast Guard about it, though? Did they approach you?

Colin: 22:18

So someone else in industry, with one of the other transporters who I knew from the Chadux days, you know, we had coffee and he told me you can't do what you're doing, but you might want to look into a 3302 permit. It's something in CFR that's going to allow you to do what you're doing, even though you're not inspected as a sub-chapter D tank vessel. So, okay, great. So he didn't just dump a problem on me, he gave me a solution and I was very, very grateful for that.

Shannon: 22:56

That is one thing about the fuel industry, that it's part of the reason why I stayed and built a business here, and I liken it to siblings Like. We're all like siblings in that we love to compete and see who's the best, but we also take care of each other and that right there, instead of squishing you or letting you out to hang. You know they came in through that network and I've had that happen so many times in my own career and been so thankful for it when people have chirped up and helped rather than hindered.

Colin: 23:25

It made all the difference for us. So we followed up. You know he gave me this advice and, okay, we went to the Coast Guard and again explained to them what we want to do and they kind of scratched their heads, but they were excited, it was something new.

Shannon: 23:41

Yeah.

Colin: 23:42

Well, the inspectors I talked to, they were enthusiastic and once they kind of wrapped their head around what we were doing, they appreciated that we were trying to do this out in the daylight.

Shannon: 23:54

The proactive approach. Instead of asking for forgiveness, you're asking for permission. Yeah.

Colin: 24:00

Right, and there's been a history of maybe people moving fuel around in the cover of darkness looking over the shoulder, you know that's good.

Shannon: 24:09

No, we follow the rules all the time.

Colin: 24:12

Yeah, so you know, again, people regulators have been enthusiastic about helping us. They know we're not the biggest and we're kind of always improving, but we're heading in the right direction and they've been very helpful. So the Coast Guard helped us get the 3302 permit, which comes out of 46 CFR, and it allows uninspected vessels like ours to deliver fuel without being an inspected vessel. But there's some guidelines that come along with it.

Shannon: 24:50

Is this where we get into the APC territory? The alternate planning.

Colin: 24:56

No, I'm not warmed up enough for that one.

Shannon: 24:59

Okay, well, we'll park APC for a minute. So just to recap for our non-nautical listeners as complex as the regulations are on land for bulk fuel storage and dispensing, they are even more complex once you take it to water, because, of course, the risk is much higher, and so both the state and the Coast Guard have some pretty complicated regulations, and it's a challenge even for experts. So tell me more about the 3302 then, because I jumped the gun, so we'll set aside APC for now. So what comes next?

Colin: 25:33

So the 3302 permit, it is like the APCs and it's in the fact that it's unique to Alaska and basically it's. Whoever wrote it into CFR had some understanding of Alaska and knew that it's not like the lower 48. And you have these remote communities that are just struggling to maintain their way of life and afford their way of life and they don't have the resources or the infrastructure that they do down south.

Shannon: 26:06

And specifically we're talking road systems and rail systems because in the lower 48, almost every community has at least road access and often rail access as well in some form. But in Alaska we don't even have joined up utility grids. Like there's so many pieces of infrastructure in Alaska that are fractured on a scale I don't think anyone in the lower 48 can imagine. Until you get up here and fly for an hour and a half straight and realize there's an hour and a half of uninterrupted, no roads, no, nothing, no infrastructure, maybe a harbor in between that you might see.

Colin: 26:41

There's just no infrastructure. So they recognize that and they said, okay, if there's a community that's not on the road system and doesn't have regular service from a common carrier, so a barge, a carrier, a freighter, if they're not coming in there on a weekly basis and it's not practical that somebody is, maybe they don't have a dock or you know, no one's going to go in there with a tanker or a fuel barge If those are the circumstances, for that community will allow an unexpected cargo vessel to go in there and deliver fuel. So that's actually written into CFR and just like these APCs, we're fully compliant with CFR. We're not under the radar, we're not, you know, less than anybody else. We meet CFR just in a different way, but in a way that's written in the CFR. So they're allowing us to do this legally.

Shannon: 27:51

Could you talk a little bit about inspected vessels? Because I think if somebody didn't know the vessel industry they would hear uninspected and they're imagining like a car that never goes to the shop and gets its oil changed. But could you talk about what that gives some context for what inspected versus uninspected means?

Colin: 28:08

Right and that's a good point To be an inspected Coast Guard inspected vessel. That process starts before the boat is a vessel. It starts with plans and review of plans and approval by the Coast Guard. They're inspecting the building process, they're overseeing it and once the boat is in operation, they're looking at it annually. They're walking on the vessel, looking for certain things and then every couple of years the boats hauled out of the water and they're inspecting the hull. So we operate these vessels. I mean, they're built to military specifications but they were not built under the supervision of the Coast Guard and there's just no, you know, reversing time. It would be. I don't want to say it's impossible to do it, but it would be very difficult to turn these boats into inspected vessels. We basically have to rip out all the wiring, all the plumbing, everything and just kind of start over. So it's not practical.

Shannon: 29:13

And these vessels are under the minimum size requirements for this inspection as well correct, they're smaller than what's required.

Colin: 29:19

Yeah, so that's another whole different topic is so to deliver cargo as an uninspected vessel you have to be under 15 gross registered tons. That's kind of a political designation. It's not necessarily we're displacing like Archimedes, would you know, tell us we're displacing water. You know? It has more to do with compartments on the boat being designated and maybe exempt from the tonnage calculation, the displacement calculation.

Shannon: 29:57

Oh, so you can have a vessel with exemptions. It could be over, but only the stuff that's counted is under Exactly, and you know it's pretty common in the marine industry.

Colin: 30:06

You look down south, they've got these giant casino vessels or passenger vessels and they're huge.

Colin: 30:13

You know, if you just weighed them with a scale they'd be, you know, 200,000, 300,000 pounds, pretty big boats. But through this process of that's called ad measuring, they reduce the tonnage and they do it down south. A lot for licensing. You know, they want to get these vessels under 100 tons so they can find more captains to run them. And in our case our vessels the supplier and transporter have been ad measured to be under 15 tons so we're not required to be inspected under sub chapter I.

Shannon: 30:52

It also allows you to staff them appropriately for the remote work that you're doing. Correct, it does.

Colin: 30:59

So you know we can find captains, but it's really just not being in the inspected world because again, there's no turning back time with our military landing craft and having them inspected. So that's the whole 15 tons, you know, in ad measuring. Yeah, it's just another one of the things we have to deal with.

Shannon: 31:21

Okay, yeah, that's. I mean, that's not a small portion to deal with. Let's unpark the APC. Does that apply to you at all, or are you underneath that or outside of that?

Colin: 31:33

Again, we have a very small response plan and a response standard, 217 barrels, which is, I think, probably it's got to be the smallest plan in the state it is. They checked.

Colin: 31:49

It's a baby plan, so oh, it is, it's, and I'm okay with that. You know I don't want to get too often to the weeds, but our response planning standard is, you know so, 10% of that. So like 21, 22 barrels. You know, in the first 24 hours of a spill, theoretically, on paper, we would have to come up with the resources to clean up 22 barrels of oil, or at least to start the process.

Shannon: 32:18

At that level, I'm imagining you can bring the equipment with you rather than risk lying on outside resources.

Colin: 32:25

Yeah, so we have, and because of our ODPCP and the 3302 permit we have resources on board. But we're also members of Chadux, the oil spill removal organization, and I'm pretty sure they can get a skimmer and some you know bladders and you know maybe a skiff to where we are with an incident in 24 hours to respond to 22 barrels of oil.

Shannon: 32:53

Do you pay a barrel rate, of 217 barrels?

Colin: 32:57

Yeah, yeah. So, and again, it's all. It's all theoretical and it's all part of the planning process.

Shannon: 33:03

but so, for context, many of our clients have several million barrels that they pay towards the Chaduz-Azra coverage. So 217 is just I don't know it's cute, yeah, it's cute.

Colin: 33:17

So honestly, I don't think you know we really need to worry about an APC at our planning level.

Shannon: 33:25

If you wanted to cover a brief overview of what they were for our non-nautical folks listening. I have the same understanding of APC and, as you know, they're working to change it again as we speak. So it's a shifting sand regulation. For me it seems to always be updated and changing, but if you wouldn't mind giving us the 10,000 foot overview, I would love that.

Colin: 33:48

I'll do my best and I left that world in 2015. And you know it's like you said, it's an ever-changing world. But it is like our 3302 permit in that it acknowledges Alaska's unique situation, that you don't have the infrastructure and you also are dealing with great distances, the national planning standard what all these people who move fuel, at least down south, have to abide by. They have to have resources to respond to an incident, a percentage maybe of their cargo within a certain timeline. And that's great for the Houston Ship Channel where you have an OSRV, an oil spill response vessel and a barge sitting there just on the ready.

Colin: 34:41

But if you're going out to Adak or Western Alaska. Not only is there not OSRVs, there's no ports to put them, there's no safe place to store all these vessels.

Shannon: 34:54

And there's 20 hours of hard going between where they can be stored and where potentially they may be asked to go. And if the weather's up, that 20 hours might be 48, depending on whether they have to shelter. Dodge left, dodge right, and you and I both know spills never happen on blue skies. They always happen during something horrible.

Colin: 35:15

Yeah, and even if you could theoretically have these same resources scattered about as you do in the lower 48, somebody has to pay for this. And if they were able to do it, a gallon of gasoline in Kivalina would be $60, $70. I don't know, I'm making up a number.

Shannon: 35:38

No, for real, You're not joking. Because if they had to have a whole other barge that was equal to the volume of the barge that was delivering a company, every barge to where it went, just in case there was a spill and they needed the capacity and the response resources, it would double or triple that you know the price of the fuel, or more, because that barge is not being utilized to make money. It's just realized to be a babysitter for the other one. Maybe I'll see if I can get Dan Nut or the Coast Guard itself to come on here and talk more about it. But that is.

Shannon: 36:10

The gist of it is that in New York Harbor and Houston shipping channels and what's the one out of Seattle, like the corridor right out of Seattle there's a lot of resources and they're very close together. And once you get to Alaska there's less and less resources and longer and longer distances the further out you go. Because of our lack of infrastructure and the costs to make it the same as some of these really busy shipping ports is too expensive for these communities to actually receive fuel. It would be so astronomical. They would just would not be able to receive fuel. And if Alaska wants to keep its communities and cultures the way they are. We've got to have some different considerations for that, so I don't even. I mean we can also talk about how protective it is of the environment as well, because all of these ships, people, have resources to respond. It's just not the level of some of these other places in the lower 48.

Colin: 37:07

Right and I guess, going back to why this even came up, why we're discussing this, you know and again I don't want to get out of my lane and you mentioned Dan Nut and Buddy Custer, with Chadux and Jim Butler. These are the folks who live in that world, but again it's a nod to Alaska and our unique circumstances that somewhere down south in Washington or wherever they wrote the CFRs that apply, someone was paying attention to Alaska and our unique circumstances. You know, again, we're 46 CFR and that's where the 3302 permit comes from, and APCs are 33 CFR. You know 155, where where oil spill regulations come from, and in either circumstance it's not, you know, it's not a way to water down regulations, it's a way to do it differently but equally as effective and allowing people to continue on with their way of life.

Shannon: 38:10

Yeah, I like that's very well put, Colin. The Coast Guard has been incredibly intent, especially in the last few years, on getting that feedback and bringing it back to Washington DC. So I do think that things are changing, especially as the Northwest Passage opens up. I mean, that's creating quite a bit of focus, if you will, on Alaska and some of the ports that they're looking at putting in on, you know, nome and Kotsabue areas. It's going to change things for the better, probably.

Shannon: 38:40

So, Colin, thank you for taking us through the intricacies of getting the state squared away and the Coast Guard squared away, and now you're delivering fuel from your craft over water. You've got all the plans and permits in place through a really unique collaboration between all these different agencies. And I was curious as we wrap this interview up and I appreciate you taking the time to talk us through it because there really is a lot of risk involved in driving fuel trucks on and off, and I think some of the things that your group has done is maybe pioneering a way to the future, like having other ways to deliver fuel that are less risky. But I was wondering if you had any fun stories to share with us. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it all doing deliveries to some of these remote locations. Did you have anything you wanted to share with us that was interesting or I don't know. Surprise me.

Colin: 39:33

Yeah, yeah, it seems like every trip there's something unique about it. Just a couple of things that come to mind. You know, we did a trip to Woody Island, which is, you know, just outside of Kodiak. You know, with a boatload of cattle. There was a busking, yeah.

Shannon: 39:52

Like real moo"cows yeah.

Colin: 39:54

Yeah, yeah.

Shannon: 39:55

What would they go into the island for, was it like?

Colin: 39:58

they put them out there. They run wild and you know there's there's a Bible camp out there and they must oversee the cattle. They're the ones who brought them over, but it was interesting to get them off the boat. It was almost like those little cattle grades or fences that they have in the ground that they don't want to step over.

Shannon: 40:19

Oh, I bet that looks a lot like the nose of a landing crab, exactly, exactly.

Colin: 40:23

So it took a lot of prodding to get the cattle off the boat. Oh my gosh.

Shannon: 40:28

Did you get cowboy hats for that delivery? I would have had a cowboy hat straight up One of the guys who brought them.

Colin: 40:34

You know he was the type and you know if he was a construction worker he'd have the cowboy hat hard hats. That's a nice pun. That's crazy.

Colin: 40:45

That was an interesting one. We did a trip to Old Harbor for the Marines and we're bringing all kinds of supplies there and I'm looking at one of the pallets and these pallets are stacked six feet high and it turned out that, you know, we had pallets and pallets of drink boxes chocolate milk drink boxes that we brought to Old Harbor for the Marines because apparently, chocolate milk they like drink boxes.

Colin: 41:16

Like little sippy juice boxes, like little sippy cups or sippy boxes for the, you know, some of the meanest, toughest people in the world. So, yep, that one kind of made me laugh. I guess everybody. I think we're the only people in Alaska without a reality TV show.

Colin: 41:37

We did get approached by a group that wanted to make a show about landing craft and cargo wars between landing craft and I told them well, you know I'm interested, but we don't do drama, we're not going to ham it up, we don't go out in bad weather, we just we're very conservative and there's not a lot of drama. But boy, our customers, they're the story. We can go to these spaces and you can see how these folks live and they're living a subsistence lifestyle and very historical and unique. And boy, they never called me back. They had no interest in you know.

Shannon: 42:22

They didn't have any interest in tough Alaskans doing cool Alaska stuff. They just wanted a drama.

Colin: 42:26

They just wanted drama and people yelling at each other. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't talk too much about the reality TV show industry in Alaska, but we still do not have our show, nope.

Shannon: 42:42

You and the pirate gold of Adak came to Adak. We had a similar request and I said no, thank you, I'm well aware of. I don't need any of that.

Colin: 42:52

So we failed to make the reality show market with our business. I hopefully I hope that says something good about our business that we you know didn't make the cut.

Shannon: 43:05

Cheers to unsexy businesses. They last longer and do much better. Oh, Colin, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise today. I really appreciate you walking us through. I know that was some complex regulations but hopefully it'll give our listeners an idea of what your group has to go through and if anyone else in other areas of the state like Western Alaska maybe want to try something similar, it would give them an idea of where to start.

Colin: 43:33

That's great and I think there's room. You know, if anybody ever had questions on how to go down the road, we have gone down. I'm happy to help them, because Alaska is a big place and I don't. You know, we've got all the work we want and there's more of it that needs to be done. So, yeah, I'm glad we've cracked the nut and we can help others do the same.

Shannon: 43:58

That is an incredibly generous offer and I do hope more people will take it, because you're right this. We work, as you know, from Ketchikan to ADEC, all the way up to Akiyagvik, and there is an untapped need. This state has so much remote work, and not even just the communities. There's a lot of ongoing environmental work and exploration work that just exists in places where you can't get deep water boat access, and they all need things like fuel and chocolate milk, although I've never heard of anyone bringing in cattle. That's going to go down in my database of stories Fun stuff. Yeah, all right, Colin, we appreciate the time. Thank, you.

Colin: 44:39

Thank you very much, I enjoyed it.

Shannon: 44:41

Yeah, me too. I'm really glad you came on, thank you.