EP# 14 - Slowing Down Aboard the David B

In this episode of Beyond the Boat, Leroy talks with Christine and Jeffrey Smith of the David B, a nearly century-old wooden vessel carrying guests through Southeast Alaska.

Their story begins with a boat they believe may have chosen them: a weathered vessel with an original Washington Iron Works engine, hidden craftsmanship, and enough promise to inspire years of restoration. Today, the David B is more than a charter boat. She is a home, a workplace, a companion, and the center of a community that includes crew, returning guests, mechanics, shipwrights, and people whose lives have been changed by time aboard.

Christine and Jeffrey share what passengers often do not see: the winter maintenance, the constant responsibility, the long season, the food planning, the weather decisions, and the quiet pressure of caring for both people and vessel. They also describe what the boat gives back: adventure, companionship, connection, and the rare chance to slow down in a wild landscape.

This conversation explores wooden boat stewardship, old engines, wood-fired cooking, Alaska’s living landscape, and the way a boat can become part of the family.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Boat. I'm your host, Leroy Lewis. Thanks for coming along as we navigate the stories that seem to travel with wooden boats. Stories shaped by the people and communities who care for them. Each episode is a chance to slow down and enjoy what makes wooden boat life so special. The history and backstories, the care, the voyages, the community, and the people you meet along the way. So let's step aboard and get into our next episode. Nearly a 100-year-old wooden boat, a slow-turning engine with the rhythm of a heartbeat, a wood-fired stove warming the galley, and two people who have shaped a life around carrying guests into the wild places of Southeast Alaska. This story is about restoration, responsibility, community, and the strange way an old boat can gather people around herself, not just as passengers, but as part of her continuing life. Today's conversation is with Christine and Jeffrey Smith of the David B, a nearly 100-year-old wooden vessel that carries guests through southeast Alaska. When we first connected, they were already underway, moving north from Ketchikan to Petersburg. You may hear some of that in the background. The rhythm of the boat, the engine, and in a way that feels right. Because this is not a conversation about a boat sitting still. It is about a working vessel in motion. The David B is simply not transportation through Alaska. Christine and Jeffrey have shaped an experience around her. One that includes wilderness, weather, wildlife, a wood-fired cook stove, an old Washington Ironworks engine, and a pace low enough for people to notice where they are. But behind that experience is a tremendous amount of work. Paint, varnish, mechanical care, provisioning, permits, guest needs, weather decisions, and the constant responsibility of keeping both the boat and her passengers safe. What I found most compelling is how Christine and Jeffrey talk about the David B almost as a living presence. They care for her, she cares for them. And over time, she has gathered a community around herself. So today, we'll talk about how the David B came into their lives, what it takes to keep her working, what passengers discover aboard, and why slowing down may be one of the greatest gifts a wooden boat can offer. Christine, Jeffrey, thank you for both joining me.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

Yeah, thank you for having us. Yeah, we look forward to being here.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Before we get into the full story, I want to begin right where you are. You're in Alaska. Can you paint the picture for us? Where are you right now? What's happening aboard, and what does this moment feel like?

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Partway into our season, we we've uh already done one trip and we came up to Alaska a couple weeks ago. We ran 92 hours straight through from Bellingham to Ketchikan and got there with a few extra days to clean everything up and get ready. And uh we did a trip in Misty Fjords, and then uh yesterday we left Ketchikan early in the morning and late in the in the afternoon, early evening, we got in here to Petersburg, and we have a couple days here before we start our next trip.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Were you guys paying attention to this leg of your trip?

SPEAKER_00 4:26

This time of year, um, this part, uh right now we're just focusing on getting everything kind of back into that uh type of uh working sort of feel where we're trying to get everything back to where we remember what we did last year and keeping it smooth and all that. So getting sort of the cobwebs out of our systems and remembering what we do and see what the cycle of food is and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

The business is seasonal. We offer trips up here in Alaska in the summertime, and then in the winter we're back in Bellingham, Washington. So anything that's seasonal like that, you always have this time at the beginning of each new phase of it where you have to remember what you how you did things, what you did.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Right, where we put everything in the fall, and so but uh I think we're pretty we're pretty good now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

How has the weather um shaped this part of your trip?

SPEAKER_02 5:27

So after that trip in Ketchikan, out of Ketchikan, we have a stretch between there and where we are now that is kind of exposed and often can have a lot of wind and uncomfortable seas. So we actually waited out a day in Ketchikan so that we could come up here yesterday when the weather was actually uh pretty much flat, calm. It was flat. There was a nice little uh light breeze from behind us the whole way. We made great time.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, we saw some sea otters, an elephant seal, a bunch of humpback whales, uh yeah, some good birds along the way.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

So there's kind of had our own little adventure on the way up here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Oh, that sounds great. What's uh the difference between this next part of the trip with your people who will be joining you from the trip you did around Bin Canal in a Misty Ford?

SPEAKER_02 6:22

The Misty Fjords is a it's a one-of-a-kind trip that we only do once. It kind of came about during COVID as an answer to something to do in that area. Most of what we offer, however, is in this area from Petersburg north to Juneau and out to Glacier Bay. All these trips up here, we go look at glaciers. There's uh areas where there's lots of whales feeding. This next trip is actually a trip to go to a bear observatory and spend some time sitting on the beach watching brown bears.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, so this is sort of the whales, glaciers, and bears time of the year.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

And how would you frame misty fjords?

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Misty Fjords, I think, is one of these underrated places that people don't really know that much about. It's a little bit smaller, that's sort of whales and bears without the glaciers. And it's it's a really beautiful location. We were in uh Rudyard Bay and Walker Cove that have these high-sided fjords with um, you know, there's there's snow on them a little bit. We anchored one night, sort of at the base of a cliff, and in the morning got up and listened to just beautiful bird song. And yeah, it's just a it's a smaller, it's more compact. We did some bushwhacking one day, did some, walked a trail that's uh a difficult trail to walk on at times. Um, this one was particularly the Punch Bowl Cove trail had a lot of fallen trees on it. And luckily the group that we'd had had been on that we figured it's 17 years they've been coming with us, and so we knew them really well and knew that they were up for the challenge. So we went and walked the Punch Bowl Cove trail up to the lake, and along the way we had to crawl over a bunch of uh fallen trees, through fallen trees. Uh there was a little bit of mud, it'd been dry, but the mud wasn't so bad. So it's a little bit wild, both places, the Misty Fjords trip and all these other trips that we do. Uh, we sort of focus on kind of the wild side of the trips. So we like to uh get people ashore, experience um, experience the beach as much as the water.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

Well it sounds like you've really gotten meshed into your trip this season pretty well.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Yeah, no, it feels it actually feels really good and it was nice having familiar people on board um because as you know, we were trying to get back into the swing of things, you know, you might forget one thing here or something there, like, you know, maybe I forgot to put the ketchup on the table, which I wouldn't have during the the highlight of the or the uh center of the season.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

We have a lot of repeat passengers. We're the 80% or more repeat and referral, but it is fun with this one family because they have come so many times and we we know them really well.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

We we watch their kids grow up and go to college and graduate from college and become like adult human beings.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

Well, can you take me back to how the David B first came into your lives?

SPEAKER_02 9:25

We had tried to raise money to build a new boat, and when that fell through, we went looking for old boats that we could restore, and we found a number of them, and uh we selected the David B, partly because of its engine, partly because it looked like it had sort of the best layout for us to be able to convert it into what we wanted to do. But it was also a uh a very pretty boat. It was built in an era when they cared about craftsmanship, so everything that was there, even though it was in disrepair, was uh had been beautifully built.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, it was quite a um, I'd say a a blank page for what we could do with it. So there wasn't really much of anything inside, like there was and been converted to buy fish, and so there were some in the passenger cabin area now. There was a couple fuel tanks, and that was pretty much about it that was in there. So we could take everything out and make something that we wanted ourselves. We were like a lot of people, we started out um, we were young, we're in our 20s, and we had uh a lot of ambition, not a lot of money, and we had to do a lot of work to get the boat from where it had been to where it is today. And our initial rebuild took us eight years to restore the boat, mostly because we didn't often have time and money at the same time, so we had one or the other, and we didn't ever have a lot of money or a lot of time, so it took us quite a bit of time to get this all together.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

It was pretty rough when we started too. When we first were taking passengers, it was nothing like it is today. We luckily had time along the way and and the winters in between seasons to be able to work on things, and every year we do really big projects to make things better for the passengers and make it better for us to run it, and we all kinds of little small projects in addition to all the maintenance. Yeah, we spent eight years, that initial rebuild, and uh there were any number of times along the way there where we we almost gave up. It was an awful lot of work, pretty big financial draw for us.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Remortgaged the house, we did all sorts of things. So yeah, I feel like those years sometimes I kind of forget about what they were like. At one point, somebody asked us how long it was gonna take to rebuild the boat, and we were always like two years from today. It was kind of our uh our standard answer for a long time. Oh, just two more years. It'll just take two years. Eventually, in was it 2004, we were able to haul the boat out and go decide that we were gonna make a go of it and work full time. Jeffrey and another person gonna work, they were gonna work full-time. I was gonna keep running my little landscape business and and get it done. And so in 2006, we had a launching party and we started running tours.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Wow. That's uh quite the process you went through. Looking back, did you choose the boat or do you think the boat chose you?

SPEAKER_00 12:28

I always say the boat chose us, but uh Jeffrey. No, I like that.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

I I always like that feeling that the boat chose us, the the boat could see in us that we might have the wherewithal to bring it back. And I think it's kind of cool. The other boats that we looked at have all been uh crushed up and taken to the landfill. Oh so I think that the David B saw through that and saw in us some people who who could bring it back.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yes. Jeffrey, what did the engine represent to you?

SPEAKER_02 12:57

I knew about the style of engine that is in the David B. It's this it's the original engine. This style that was of engine from that era that it's an old, it's a slow speed diesel. During this era, they built a lot of these really big engines. It stands as you know, taller than I am in in the engine room, and uh it turns really slowly. And I knew about them from a friend who had worked as an engineer on a boat that had one. And uh so when I saw that, that just seemed like a rare find that there would be an antique like that still out there and for sale and in our price range and which wasn't much. The yeah, so the thought of being able to have that and maintain that engine just seemed like a really fantastic thing to me. I don't know looking back on it, whether that was the smartest decision.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

But I think it satisfies something in you, which is this sort of need to tinker. And so for the last 20 some odd years, you've had this tinkering project that now with it running as well as it does, it's sort of like this musical instrument. And Jeffree has this incredible ability to like keep it tuned and to play it and to listen to it and to understand what it's what it needs and what it's going through. And so this engine has become quite an important part of the David B. And it's something we always ask all of our guests that they should at any point during the season during their trip, they should always go down to the engine room and see this this like incredible machine that's part sculpture, kinetic sculpture sculpture, part history, and something that's nearly a hundred years old and Jeffrey has maintained with just this incredible sense of love and duty.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

I think that's a really great part of the whole package that you have there. I recall when uh uh when we met earlier just listening to it, because I think you were underway. Does the sound of that engine add something to your voyage?

SPEAKER_02 15:05

I think it's really amazing that there's this this slow, uh, you know, thump thump thump thump noise as it's running. And I think that that that changes how people feel about it, that it's that it's not just some modern thing that you push a button and it starts up and you drive away. And yeah, I think the sound of it, people have compared it to a heartbeat. I think it is like really really part of the trip for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Well, you said it runs a lot slower. What is the RPM of that?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Well, it's rated to go 325 RPM. We run about 290 to 300 somewhere in there.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

294, 293 all day yesterday.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

I just was thinking there's a lot of things on the boat that kind of slow things down.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, people will go down for a nap and have like, oh, I'm just gonna go take a little 20-minute nap. And and the engine really does sing people to sleep, which is kind of a fun, um, fun thing. Most of the time, you know, people ask, oh, you know, is how loud is your engine? And uh even in the engine room, you can go down and have a conversation next to it. It's like a little bit of a raised voice, but it's not like you like I always wear headphones down there, but it's not like you have to wear headphones down there. It's just I equate it to like an industrial sewing machine sound down there.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

At what point did uh David B stop being this project and became something larger for you?

SPEAKER_02 16:35

It might always be a big project. Uh because it's a it's a continuing, evolving project, work of art kind of thing. But I think it sort of captured us in the beginning and we didn't realize it. I think the moment is is more where we realized that it had chosen us, you know, and that was like sometime long after we had started running it, that we realized, you know, this this wasn't necessarily our choice. It was it was something that maybe to happen to us. But but on the other side of it, it's still like just this endlessly evolving work of art.

SPEAKER_00 17:13

I think one of the times that we realized that it wasn't just our project was as we were working on it, people wanting to come and help us as well. Um right when we bought the boat, my dad was really excited to go out and buy power tools. And so he'd had, I don't know, for whatever reason he hadn't had any projects and he had all this power tool buying like energy pent up, and so he went out and he bought us he bought us a drill press and a bandsaw. And I think we still have both of those. Do we still have both of those? Like almost 30 years later. Yeah. But um, but it wasn't just my parents, but it was other people, you know, asking, Oh, hey, can I come and help paint? Can I help with this project? And over the years we've just had a lot of different people that we know who have skills that have been able to help us along the way, and they've wanted to. And then again, as we started running the boat, people who would continually come back or were like somehow changed by their experience of the David B that we realized that this was this boat is something bigger than us.

SPEAKER_02 18:25

I thought when we bought a old wooden boat that people would just be like, Okay, don't call me, I'm not your friend anymore, I can't help you paint.

SPEAKER_03 18:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

I thought I was sure that nobody would be interested, we'd be totally in it on our own. And the fact that the opposite happened was was just amazing. So many people were like, I don't have very many skills, but I have this skill. And can I help you with such and such?

SPEAKER_00 18:53

And yeah, there were just so many times where people came and helped and where we needed we needed advice on something, and people are like, Oh yeah, we really want to help you with this because we can see that you're working really hard for this. People would, you know, see that our you know, constant persistence in making this project go helped them wanting to help us, and you know, I guess also helped us keep the project going as well.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

So you have talked about an awful lot of work that you've put into the boat. I want to hear a little bit more about what she's given back to you.

SPEAKER_02 19:30

We get to go explore really cool places in Alaska all summer. And uh and we get to uh do something as a job that a lot of people only get to do uh for short periods of time when they have just enough vacation.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah. Yeah, that's done. And to be able to, it's taken us to a number of places that we go to year after year after year, and we've watched these areas and we build a bigger connection to the places that we go to, uh, which has always been really important. But I really think that one of the biggest things that the David B has given us has been the sense of community that we have gotten through not only our passengers that come year after year, but also through the people around us who we've met along the way, friends through the boating community. We've developed a lot of relationships there. We've developed a lot of relationships with people both in Alaska and Washington. And I think that has always been something that's made me really proud that we've been able to cultivate this wonderful boat, but through the boat we've had a lot of friendships that we've we've been able to maintain.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

We often joke that we have two sets of friends. Um, because we're here in Alaska in the summer and in Washington state in the winter, we and we have friends up here that we see on and off during the summer because they're running boats up here or they live up here. And then uh and then we have another set of friends when we get back to to our uh our winter place. Is your community of people is that expanded beyond just the passengers or yeah, I think that's a big part of it is that we are connected to places here and to people here as much as as much as the passenger. I think there's sort of two sides to that community. One is the community of all these people who have gone on the David B, they know us through that, and they care about the boat because of that. And then there's this other side of it, which is the pr more professional side of doing this as a business, and we have people on on fishing boats that are up here that know us, and we have people on tenders up here that know us, and there's people that run other tour operations that know who we are and uh and that we're friends with.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Or even just on the docks, people walking by and say, Oh, we've seen you for years. We love your boat. So it's kind of it's always nice to to have that sort of acknowledgement.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

I'm actually surprised so far this morning that nobody's stopped by during this interview. You know, the galley door is right facing the dock, and I'm surprised nobody's come and knocked on the door yet. Like, good to see you're back in Petersburg for the season.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Because that happens often to what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 22:28

It does.

SPEAKER_01 22:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

We had this thing for a while where now our fridge and freezer are are inside the boat, but for a while we had a freezer on the back deck. And some mornings we'd wake up and we'd open the freezer and there would be a fish in there in a garbage bag, which is the way fishermen give fish away to other people. But there'd be a whole salmon in there. And then we'd have to look around the harbor to figure out what boat had come in last night late at night, and somebody had stopped by and dropped off fish for us.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

That sounds like you really have a great community. What do people imagine your life is like? And what is the reality that they don't see?

SPEAKER_02 23:10

I think people focus on driving the boat as they think that's the biggest part of our job. And I think that's kind of one of the background parts of it to me. Like this is less about steering the boat and more about figuring out where we want to go to see the things we want to see and how to make the experience for the passengers amazing. I I feel like we're kind of crafting this adventure for them. There's all kinds of things that might come along on any given day, and we might need to turn around and drive back a couple miles to go look at something, or you know, if somebody sees something, we do make changes to all of our plans. But I think the big thing is like trying to figure out how to make sure that the people who come on a trip with us have a have a certain experience.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

I think back a number of years ago, people would, you know, friends of ours would say, Oh, you guys are just on vacation all summer. And yeah, out yachting. Out yachting all summer. And when I think there's a whole lot that goes on in the background that people don't see, it's you know, Jeffrey planning the itinerary, which we have these carefully crafted itineraries that because of the way weather and wildlife work, they're never the same. They're never what we never say, we never follow them. But then there's also all the maintenance that we do in the winter. So our summer job, we sort of figure it's kind of a 24-7 job, like we're always we're always on. And then in the winter, we have sort of like these, you know, 68-hour days where we're working on like engine projects or maintenance projects, painting the boat, um, redoing the floors, replacing things. We have a list that we maintain in the summer, which is things to make next year better. And it just gets longer and longer. And then, you know, that might be more hooks and latches, or it might be things that make it easier for our passengers to move around the boat. So maybe like we added in a new drink cooler a couple years ago so that people could add more of their own stuff into a refrigerator so they weren't always getting into my refrigerator. And trying to figure out how our passengers move through the boat is a lot of work that we do in the off season. So they don't see a lot of that. And then it takes us two days to clean the boat. It takes me about six to eight hours to provision for a trip and then to plan a menu to work through everybody's food issues and to make sure that there's something for everybody to eat and to figure out what their levels of activity is and to come up with something that each person can enjoy and take from the trip something really special back with them.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

People often on the trip, they'll ask us, they'll look at our schedule and they'll say, Oh, you have three days off before your next trip. And I always pause and say, Well, yes, we aren't actually driving around during those days, but we have to clean the boat, provision everything, fix it. Fix everything that's broken, do any oil changes that need to happen on generators, outboards, and then go to the fuel dock and all these other things. And and so we do end up with a little bit of time off for ourselves, but in the summer we're pretty much on the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

You know, just as you're talking, it my mind just kind of zooms out a little bit. And you talk about the summer differently than you talk about the winter, but it's all one continuum, really. It sounds like it's it's an entire lifestyle. Can you kind of speak to that entire lifestyle?

SPEAKER_02 26:47

We realized at some point in this that we must not be doing it for the money because the money was going back into the boat. The expense of maintaining something that's a hundred years old and wooden and uh maintaining an engine that's that same era, it just eats up a lot of money. It's really hard to decide at any given time what you should be spending that money on, but it's never very seldom is it us. It ends up being mostly spending it on the boat. But we have we have a continuum of in the summer, we're trying to figure out what we need to do next winter to solve any problem we have we're having in the summer, and in the winter we're trying to make sure everything in the is gonna go fine in the summer. So right now we're in this spot in between summer and winter. We've kind of we've done a trip, but we're kind of just getting back into the summer pattern.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Yeah, I think the uh the cycle, the yearly cycle is you know part of that lifestyle style. One of the things that I really like about it is that that it's always different. I really love the the portion of the sea, each portion of the season I really love for different things. So this time of year, we're about ready to go have a bunch of adventures. Our passengers will be boarding uh a couple days from now. And I'm really excited. We get to go to Pack Creek and watch the bears, and we get to go um over on Amalty Island, and then we get to go back to the mainland and go see glaciers, and there's stuff we get to do along the way, and I can take people into forests and we can sit and sort of observe what's going on there. So there's all that stuff that's really exciting to do, and I get to make all these wonderful meals for people, and so that's that's very exciting. And then as the season sort of wears on and you get tired because we have these really, really long days and we're entertaining the whole time. But but then as the season wears on, you get more tired, then we're gonna be heading south soon, migrating like the birds do. Then we'll get home and then we'll change how our pattern pattern works, and that is, you know, get up in the morning, go for a hike, work on the boat until the evening, and then sort of do that again. And it's a really rewarding lifestyle. And it's it's again something that the boat in this business has afforded us to be able to do. So we can connect with nature, we can connect with the wood of the boat and with all the people that come and go throughout the different seasons.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah, it sounds like you've definitely built up a real understanding of what's needed. I I'm curious, how does the boat tell you what she needs?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Well, we come up with a list of things that we think that we need, and then something breaks. And so that's how she tells us what the boat needs. We have this incredible project list that's a Kanban style list that Jeffrey maintains, and I don't even know how many columns it has in it. But uh, do you want to explain that a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 29:51

We needed a way to keep track of all the projects that we do in the wintertime and some in the summer, but we we needed a way to prioritize various things. And so we have this elaborate list we uh maintain that keeps track of whether they're should do, must do, really should do, must do, and really must do, and then you know, can't leave without doing. So we can keep track of, you know. And then there's the there's the dream list of things. Sometimes those get done, and but most of the time they're not done.

SPEAKER_00 30:25

Yeah, and it's also sort of organized by who does those things. So whether it's Jeffrey, which he has most of the things on the list, we have a couple people help us out in the winter, and then we have a full-time deck hand who also is doing projects in the winter. So in the mornings we'll kind of huddle and come up with the daily project list and that's working off this greater list of things that need to be done.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

What project from this past winter are you most relieved to have behind you?

SPEAKER_02 30:55

We disassembled the entire engine basically this winter and uh and did a huge rebuild. And I'm really glad that's done. That was an awful lot of work. As we dug into it, we kept finding more things that needed attention. So we went through, we tightened up all the main bearings, we re-poured new bearings for the connecting rods. That was an elaborate thing. We had to melt out all the old Babbitt in the bearings and uh pour new ones and then machine them to fit. We had to machine the crankshaft in place to uh get it to fit a new flange on the end of it, on the drive end of it. And then too many projects to list, but for most of the winter, about 30% of the engine was sitting in the saloon area. We had taken it off and and put it up there to get it out of our way so we could work on things. So I was pretty happy when uh we didn't have any more green engine parts sitting in the saloon and they were back connected where they were supposed to be. And then we had the couple trips here, and at this point, everything that we did looks like we did the right thing. It's all worked correctly.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

And then the sort of easier things we did this winter were we recoded the decks and the cabins all got fresh paint. And what else did we do? We did a bunch of other things.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

Yeah. Just give me an idea of a list of skills that you've had to acquire or learn yourselves to do this whole project.

SPEAKER_02 32:24

So I came into this. I'd worked on the schooners on the New England coast, coast of Maine, and then uh a little bit in the on some schooners in the Midwest, and then on the West Coast, I'd worked for a couple different boat companies and a tugboat company, and in all those places, I was learning, learning a lot. One of the companies in Bellingham, we did engine rebuilds every winter. One of the jobs I had in New England, we we did a huge uh wooden boat rebuild, a boat bigger than the David B, wooden boat bigger than the David B. We did a big rebuild project on that. So along the way, I had gained a bunch of the boat building skills, a bunch of the engine repair skills, and a lot of the electrical and plumbing and that kind of thing. And also um a lot of the machine shop stuff, the machining work that we now do. But in all those, I say that 97% of those professions, the work is pretty, pretty easy and logical, and you can learn a lot of it very quickly. But knowing what to do when something goes wrong or something's not the way it's supposed to be is where you need the expert. And I always say with this, the beauty is that we know a lot of boat builders and engine repair people, and we know enough of them that we don't have to call the same one twice in one week. We can keep calling different ones as we have more and more problems. And that was certainly like when we were doing the rebuild, there was lots of like big planking stuff that we did. And I would call up my boat builder friends and say, hey, this is this is what's what it looks like here. What what do I need to do? How do I make this work? The rest of it, you know, shaping and cutting a plank just requires you to have some basic skills or whatever, but but knowing what to do when it's not right, that's where you need your that's where you need your machinist on the red telephone that you can call in an emergency. And I think that's a big part of how we were able to do the project was that we did know so many people from all the connections. So we had people to call who could advise us.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Yeah, and I think to go along with all the sort of trade skills, you know, we have to, you know, have knowledge of plumbing, electrical, woodworking, machining, what other other things, all those, all those sort of hands-on things. But another thing that we really had to learn is how to be business owners, because none of this could continue if we didn't have passengers, because they're the ones who are, you know, funding this boat to, you know, maintain its life basically without them. So this boat wouldn't exist. And so learning how to do the marketing, how to do the sales, assembling, you know, sort of the people who are on the boat. It's me and Jeffrey, our deckhand Matt, our shore support person Sarah, having all of these, you know, sort of business skills at the same time, which aren't nearly as much fun as getting to put a fresh coat of paint on the boat. Those are all really important skills that we've had to had to learn. And we're still learning it. Sometimes, you know, marketing feels like it's uh, you just sort of put something out there and maybe somebody will see you. And even though almost all of our clientele is returning or referral, there's still, you know, people will, you know, sort of cycle in and out. We might have people who've gone with us 17 years, or maybe we've had people who do five, six, seven trips, or they'll do all of one of all of our trips. But eventually maybe they'll age out, maybe they'll go off and do something else. So you still have to keep figuring out where new people are gonna come from. And how do you get the right type of new people who like boats? They don't mind the small, the smallness of being, you know, on a 65-foot boat with other people. How do you get people who are enthusiastic about nature? How do you get people who are, you know, excited to get in a kayak? You know, where do you where do you find those people? And working on that over the years has also been a skill that we've been always working on.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Yeah, and you haven't even mentioned the operational skills, the navigation, the weather watching.

SPEAKER_00 36:38

Yeah. Right. Yeah, that's a it's a I it's a great job for people who who like to get involved in a little bit of everything. And I think that that's it suits both Jeffrey and I really well, is that we both like a lot of different things. Yeah, we like having a cycle. We like we like things to sort of come and go, but then also to rinse and repeat at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

Right. What changes the moment the guests step aboard?

SPEAKER_00 37:06

I think when they step aboard, we start thinking more about, we go more into sort of a we need to show them the best things that we know. And so I think we go into this sort of hyper observation kind of thing. We're always looking, we're always thinking, we're always like, okay, last, you know, last week we went past this place and there was a bear on the beach, so maybe there'll be another bear on a beach this place. So let's make sure that we're looking. I think we're always trying to make sure that they're having the best possible experience. And so I think that's what changes. When we're, you know, sort of on the boat. It's a little bit messy right now in the galley. Haven't washed any dishes yet this morning. We're a little bit more casual, but I think we're we go into our professional mode when the passengers are on board.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

You said something I really loved at the Alaska is not just a pretty background, but a living, breathing place. What does that mean in the way you run your trips?

SPEAKER_02 38:07

I really like people to come away from one of these trips and later, weeks or months later, where when they're thinking about it and really processing, I want them to feel like they made some sort of connection with the natural world, with Alaska and the natural world. So much of what we do is surrounded by concrete and cars and cell phones and you know, a lot of human stuff. When we're out on these trips, we're looking at things that there are lots of places where it's untouched by humans and the wildlife is for real. It's doing its own thing and it's on a different schedule than us time-wise. And I I really feel like people need to somehow make that connection that there are still parts of the world that are on that schedule. I I want them to make a connection to that.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

Yeah, I think what we really like the most about what we do is is bringing people into the wilderness and giving them the opportunity to step out of that busy lifestyle. It's like you're always connected to your phone, you're always connected to whatever's going around, your job, um, your family. And now we can, you know, we can step out and sort of change the pace of life for people. You know, we're on this nearly 100-year-old boat, and when we're in an anchorage, it just feels like you're sort of stepping back in time. And as you step back in time, it's a slower time. So so yeah, we go ashore and we might spend a couple three hours like poking through tide pools, and we have these rubber boots that our passengers all get to wear because um it's mucky and and watery in places. And so, so to be able to like put on your rubber boots like you were a five-year-old kid again and go just turn over rocks in a tide pool is really fun, or to you know, step into an ancient forest and walk in maybe you know, 10, 20 feet and discover this incredible world that you had no idea was there, you know, that's full of moss and birds and different plants and things, and and then sit for a while and kind of just listen is something we don't do anymore. And so to be able to give people those experiences, I think is probably one of the most important things because we don't get enough nature in our daily lives.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

You talked a little bit about wanting people to get more connected. So I'm I'm just wondering, do you ever get to see that transition in people from moving from observing Alaska to be connecting to it? And and a follow-on is how does that feel to you if and when you could see that?

SPEAKER_02 40:59

I was recently at a uh gathering of a bunch of people who had been on the David B, and a number of them there gave little short talks about what they had experienced. And every single one of them, they'd all written their their little talks by themselves, but every single person there said that their experience on the David B had changed the way they see things and and had changed their life. And I thought that was significant, but I what I really liked was that quite a few of them showed me their phones, and their screensaver on their phone was a picture that they had taken in Alaska, and some of them had not been on the boat for it had been five years, and they still had that as their screensaver on their phone because that was such a moment in their life, their trip that they had done here. So I I think that this there's this connection thing that we try to create during the trip so that people will have that experience, and you have to get people out to the right places and make sure that they have all the right gear and all the technical stuff of getting them there in order that they can have that emotional experience where they connect with nature in that way. And that's kind of the part that I feel like we're crafting, we're making it happen. There's always changes, there's always things that come along where we're like, we're gonna go over there and anchor and we're gonna go skiff to the shore and go to the go to the forest, but then the whales come out and we have to go watch the whales for a while because that's what we do. But we're also trying to like make the experience happen for those people.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Yeah, I think a lot of times we don't necessarily see that moment. I think it takes a while for this experience to kind of percolate in people. And it might be we'll get an email from somebody maybe six months later, or they'll respond to one of our newsletters back to us about something that we've written and they'll share something from their trip where they're like, yeah, this is, you know, I really remember that and I really appreciated that. So even though I think, you know, sometimes we really do get to see it, we've had people say that they've it changed the direction of their life by being on the boat and having the experience that they had. Even though we don't always see that, I know that I know it happens to a lot of people. I know just doing this myself, I I think of who I was, you know, 20 some odd years ago when I started and who I am now. And I know that I have been shaped dramatically by this landscape around me. And I assume as well other people have have too.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

Yeah, Christine, you mentioned about the pace. How does the David B help people slow down?

SPEAKER_00 43:54

Well, we we like to say we're the slowest boat in the fleet, and so so just our Our physical speed helps people slow down. It gives us the chance to see things that other people in faster boats might not have the opportunity to see because they go by too fast. I think having the chance to go ashore in a lot of places where there isn't any coverage by cell phone or Starlink or anything like that gives people a chance to be undistracted where everything else in the world seems like every moment is a distraction and you're always going from one thing to the next. To be able to go for like an hour and a half in a kayak and just sort of kind of tool around looking in the water at sea stars or kelp or whatever happens to be out there and have that in a place where they can't be dinged by a notification is really, really a special moment and it helps people to slow down.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

One of our friends here in Alaska who used to guide at the Bear Observatory spot that we're going to on this next trip. This bear guide said at one point that when you're on an adventure, there needs to be a part of that adventure where you're on your way somewhere, you're making a transit somewhere, you're you're getting there, and and there's a level of sort of boredom of like, oh, this is just, we've just got to get there, we've got to go. We've got you like there's got to be this moment where you just have to sit and sort of reflect on what what you're doing to get what you're to your goal. And I feel like that's a big part of the David B because of the pace where there is this time, a lot of times during the day, where we're like, okay, it's four hours for us to get to this next spot that we want to go to, and people have to figure out what to do with their time, and isn't just necessarily scrolling on their phone. They pull out a book or they sit and stare out the window, and and there's this moment of it's not boredom, but it's it's where you have to, it's it's being reflective.

SPEAKER_00 46:05

I think it's the empty space.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

And you have to have empty space. And I think we have so much always going on that we expect every moment to be a moment of excitement and awe, and we just, you know, we're supposed to be keeping people constantly in a state of this can't be happening because it's so cool. But really, you need that empty space in that travel time where you do get to kind of come down and and reflect a bit after some amazing whale experience or seeing your first bear or whatever it is. I think empty space. We should focus on empty space more. I think that's I think I think it's important. You know, it's what makes a photograph or a painting is how you use your empty space.

SPEAKER_01 46:51

Yeah. During our other conversation, you mentioned something that I thought was really unique. Tell me about what you're cooking on.

SPEAKER_00 46:59

So I cook on a uh wood-fired cook stove. And um one of the things that I really, really love about it is like everything else that we do, it's a little bit difficult, and yet it really gives people this feeling of being cared for. People will talk about, you know, their grandmother's or their great-grandmothers' wood cook stove. And so it it again brings that timeless frame into view again. And cooking on a wood cook stove means that everything happens in its own time. It's that's it's a slower version of cooking. I make bread every day, and people ask, oh, well, how long does it take? And I say, Well, it'll be done when it's done. Cooking on a wood cook stove is basically working with heat, fuel, and time and trying to get all of that together um all at the same time while looking for wildlife and occasionally stepping up to drive and doing all the other stuff and taking people ashore is a challenge, but it's something that's a lot of fun to do. One of the things that the stove does is it always offers people a warm, comforting place to be. And I love it when people come back in the galley and they sit kind of where Jeffrey's sitting, which is right next to the stove, and they'll maybe dangle their feet next to the stove or warm their hands over it. It just adds a lot of ambiance.

SPEAKER_01 48:24

I have a lot of different sensories going on there. They got the visual, the sound with the engine, and maybe some smells, whether it's baking bread or the wood stove itself.

SPEAKER_02 48:34

Yeah, at one point we considered replacing the wood-fired cook stove with an oil-fired stove. We have lots of diesel fuel in tanks on board the David B, and it's very convenient to go get diesel fuel. So we were thinking that it might be easier to have an oil stove, a diesel-fired stove. And a friend of ours talked us out of it. He basically said, you can't get rid of that beautiful wood fire smoke smell, because that's a huge part of what the David B was to him, was this, you know, the smell of the wood smoke was really important. And I and I think that that's the kind of thing that makes the David B a certain experience is this wood fired. So we chose to have that because the boats that I'd worked on on the coast of Maine all cook with wood. So cooking with wood seemed like a viable alternative and it and it's kind of a nifty thing, but it's turned out to be a a really important part of the David B.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

Yeah. When uh passengers first board, they usually come to the cat galley door, and the first thing they see is this gorgeous stove that's got its white cast iron and has chrome uh parts to it. And when they first step on, I'm always very conscientious of what the boat should smell like. So it either smells like lunch witches cooking or cookies or granola that's that I'm making. So the moment that they step onto the boat, they get this hopefully overwhelmed by wonderful scents and um and this warm fire that that greets them as they come on.

SPEAKER_01 50:21

That must be really unique for them. I'm hearing a lot of different communities. You have your passengers, you have the people that you can see during the summer, during the winter, you have this community of people that are involved with helping you work on the boat. I'm curious, what does what does that community mean to you?

SPEAKER_02 50:43

I was gonna say I I always think it's centered around the boat. That it's the boat that that draws all those people in. But I and I think that that's partially true for the um people who help us in the winter, people who come around and ask if they can, you know, friends of ours who say, I can help you do this project, I can help you sand, I could help you paint, I whatever. And that's really a lot about the boat, but I also think it's because we've made this situation where it's fun, it's fun to join us to do to to work on the boat or to do something like that. You know, when they when they come by, it isn't all hard work. We make sure that everybody's having fun doing what they're getting to do. And I think for the the people, it's also really rewarding because they know that they're helping the boat out as much as they're helping us out. We had a guy, he's been on a couple trips with us, he and his family, and uh he came down two years ago in the wintertime. He he helped probably three weeks almost doing all this like sanding and and fairing and painting, and he helped us with a bunch of stuff on our this big project we did on the stern. And this spring we needed a couple extra people to help us move the boat north Bellingham to catch a can. And I called him up and asked or texted him and asked him if he wanted to come on the trip, and he was just he was just over the moon. He was like, whatever, I can change all my schedule to do that. That would be really fun. And I told him in the beginning, you know, like it's you're we're gonna be on a watch schedule and you're gonna have to drive the boat and take care of stuff, you know, yeah, do your part. And that that sounded amazing to him. He he he jumped at the chain.

SPEAKER_00 52:36

Yeah, I think, I think when we s started running our trips thinking about how we wanted to fit in with where our passengers are, one of the things that we've always maintained is that people come onto the boat and they're coming onto the boat and they're getting an experience that they get to experience our enthusiasm. We're not just crew that's sort of behind the scenes tending to them. What we are is like we are here to help them see everything that we think is really amazing and to have this experience. So I think we've sort of been able to attract our community because we're really enthusiastic about the boat and talking about how we've done all the restoration stuff. We're really excited to point out the the two marbled merlettes that are outside right now. We're part of the experience, and we're sharing our excitement about everything that we get to see. You know, people ask, are you tired of seeing humpback whales? And we're like, Yeah, I'm usually the first one out the door with my camera when we spot a whale. Or this past trip on in Misty Fjords, we were coming out of Rudyard Bay and and we saw something. We were trying to figure out what it was. At first, I asked Jeffrey if it was a sea otter, and he's like, No, I think maybe it's a swimming bear. And and then he got his binoculars out, and there was a wolf swimming across the channel, and you know, all of a sudden, like I erupted in excitement, and everybody else around erupted it in excitement, or we're all yelling, wolf, wolf, wolf. And if we were a different crew and we're supposed to be in our fancy work clothes, tending towards people kind of in the in the background, they wouldn't get that excitement and get spun up in the same way. So I think our excitement, I guess maybe that's a long way to saying, our excitement is sort of what kind of helps bring the community around the boat to us and us to them.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

But the boat is a big part of the magnet, but I I do feel like with all this, that we are part of the experience. People are going on on this trip because they want to be on on this particular boat, but they also want to go on this trip with us. And and we're part of it. It's like we have our meals with all the guests. We we're in the experience. One of the charter brokers up here uh doesn't offer our trips for sale, partly because that's not how his clients that's not what his clients want. And we've always thought that was kind of humorous because that's what we've focused on, and we've we've made that our thing to be part of the experience and that we're gonna be there with the people.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

Yeah, and it's helped us and it's helped the boat immensely having this community because 10 years ago, 11 years ago, we wanted to do a big pilot house rebuild. There's a bunch of reasons for this, but it was something that we were able to do through our passengers. We talked about it for years.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

We had talked about wanting to have the boat look more like it had originally and also have a lot more usable inside space that was warm and dry for guests so that the boat would be better for operating in Alaska. And we'd kind of talked about it starting about the second season or so, thinking about what would be nice and how it could work. And we talked it up for about 10 years, and then we went to our passengers and asked if they would be willing to uh fund something like that. We borrowed a bunch of money from people who had been on the boat numerous times, but they were they were very excited about it, and and that was part of what the community coming together for this.

SPEAKER_00 56:32

Yeah, and this last trip that we were just on, one of the one of the people who helped help fund, we call it the Tin Hat Project. We were kind of closing up the trip, heading back into Ketchikan, talking about all the years that we had done stuff with them, and and he said one of the things that he was really happy about, and one of his best investments he'd ever done was to help us with this pilot house rebuild. And he showed up in the everybody who invested in the the tin hat, they got a you know, special hoodie for that, and he showed up in his special hoodie, and it made me filled with pride that you know we could not only make the boat better, but also also bring this relationship closer.

SPEAKER_02 57:19

It's kind of fun. He probably got he's probably gotten much higher financial returns on many other things, but I think for him to feel like his investment in this, like the emotional return that he got, you don't get you don't get that emotional return when you buy Pepsi stock. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:38

Really?

SPEAKER_02 57:39

Maybe you do. Maybe you do. But yeah. But the thought for him that that he got to be part of this thing that was amazing when it was done. It was very cool. We in the winter of 2016, 2017, we cut the front of the existing pilot house off, and we had an aluminum thing built that to add a pilot house and a big saloon space to the main deck level of the boat. It was we we worked from the day after our last trip until the day the day of our first trip in the spring. And uh, we worked like seven days a week that whole time through the winter to we put the aluminum uh shell on and then we trimmed out the inside with wood to make it look like the same period as the David B. And uh it built it made this wonderful space for people to hang out in, um, and it made the boat so much better for what we were trying to do up here in Alaska. And it was all funded with passenger money. They either loaned us money or they paid ahead of time for trips once the thing was done, and it was a really fun experience. It was about a three-year process for us. We did a year of uh where we did some planning and and uh and money raising, and then a year of doing all the um actual design work for it, and then that winter of putting it on, and it really changed the David B and and and the experience, and it and it really was to make it better for the passengers for what we do up here.

SPEAKER_00 59:26

Yeah, and it's been it's been amazing to have all that wonderful outdoors or indoor space now. And so we've had this for like 10 years now, and it feels it feels like we just did it yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 59:40

When we went to raise money for it, we're debating whether we should do it or not. And so we said, let's let's ask people. And we sent out an email asking if anybody was interested in the project the way we kind of talked about it. And we got a list of people who said yes, they were interested and were interested in investing money. And we sent them a formal request with our various plans, and that was on a Monday, and on on Thursday, we sent them another thing that said, Well, we've only gotten about 80% of what we're hoping for, and following Monday, we had about 120% of what we were hoping for, and so we uh we decided to go through with it.

unknown 1:00:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Wow, yeah, you guys have some really great stories, and I feel like we could spend a whole nother hour or two talking about them. I really enjoy this, but I got this one more wrap-up question for us. So when the David Beef is finally quiet at the dock after the season, what do you hope she has given to you, your guests, and the people who care about her?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:47

I think I hope what she's given for us is sort of a summer of connections. We've mentioned that quite a bit. Uh summer where we can uh get to know more people, I guess to enjoy life and to enjoy what nature has to offer, and a deeper understanding of the need to slow down, to really enjoy the time that we have. And I look forward to future years. I think every year when we we finish up the season, I think about how many stories that I've received from people, who they are and what they've brought to the summer, and then also where the boat has taken us and all the unique experiences we've had, and how much how thankful I am that we have this lifestyle that gives us the ability to go out into these incredibly beautiful locations and experience beauty and solitude and wildness and and companionship.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

I really like the seasonal lifestyle because, like you asked, it gives us this chance to reflect on a regular basis every year about where we are and what we're doing. Every fall we go through that at the end of the summer. Every spring we go through that a different kind of feeling like that. And we always ask each other, like, are you are you ready for the summer? Are you excited about the summer? Are you anxious about the summer? Are you and the same in the fall? Are you are you happy with how the summer went and are you ready for the winter? I I love that ability to reflect. And I think in the fall, we very often reflect on the summer and we think about how wonderful it was to be out there driving around and looking at these amazing places and getting to be out in nature like that. It's why we chose to do this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:02

I really have enjoyed your stories. I think you really have such a great community and a great view about what you're doing. And I really appreciate the time that you've carved out of your season to sit down and share that with me. Yeah, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:18

Thank you for asking us. That's you know, it's always a it is sort of an honor when people ask you to share your stories with them. So I really appreciate that uh that you're taking the time to come up with these uh thoughtful questions and to give us the opportunity to tell our stories Christine, Jeffrey, thank you for both joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:47

Thanks for listening to Beyond the Boat. If you enjoyed this episode, follow the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast and share it with a friend so they can come aboard too. If you believe these voices matter and you want to help keep the show afloat, you can support an episode or set up a small monthly contribution via the Buy Me Coffee link in the episode description. If something in this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. These stories grow stronger when they're shared. Send your comments and feedback to Btboat Podcast at gmail.com. That's btboatpodcast at gmail.com. I'm Leroy Lewis. See you next time.