What Killed the Kayak Aleut Version Sand Point AK

Sand Point, Alaska is home to one of the larger fishing fleets in the Aleutians.  The pictures below show the boats which have replaced the kayaks of the Unangan (Aleut) hunters.

Good bye, kayaks.

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What Killed the Kayak Aleut Version Akutan Alaska

Akutan, Alaska is an island in the Aleutians and once a place where people paddled kayaks as a part of making a living.  Nowadays the biggest industry on the island is a fish processing plant.  Trawlers scrape the bottom of the ocean for fish and bring them to the processing plant to have them turned into product suitable for sale in the lower 48. The Aleut population of the island actually has very little to do with the fish plant other than extracting rent from them.  Still, the kayak as a tool for hunting, fishing and whaling is no longer in use.

The fish plant at Akutan.
Photo courtesy of Kurt Schmidt

The big  rusty things are doors on a trawl. Picture a net like a large sock with one of these doors on either side sliding along the bottom and funneling fish into the sock.  Nothing escapes.
Human added for scale.

Iron weights hold the bottom of the net close to the bottom of the ocean.

Nets.

Nets.

Bye, bye Akutan Kayaks.

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Raptor staples WHAT Raptor staples

While pondering my next move on the bottom planking, I finally got around to trimming and sanding away the rest of those Raptor staples on the transom. It just took a few minutes, and I was done. Those things sand away in seconds.

I’ve hand-sanded the transom with 220 grit, and am currently smoothing it with 400. I’m trying to decide what I want to do about staining the transom before fiberglassing.

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