Bay Welding’s Ambitious Seiner: A New Boat for a New Season
Photo Credit: Matt Lowber
In late April, the Bay Welding Services boatyard in Homer celebrated the launch of F/V Freeberd, its most ambitious build yet. The 58-foot seiner represents a new level in design, capability, and craftsmanship for the company, marking its transition from a small welding shop to a major builder of commercial and recreational vessels.
Tailor-Made to Order
The design was made in close collaboration with the new owner, Routli Meadow LLC, operated by the Girdwood-based commercial fishing Durtschi family.
Reiker Durtschi says he is very happy with the results after a shakedown cruise.
“Oh, it’s awesome,” says Durtschi. “We’re super pleased with the finished product. It checked all the boxes we wanted.”
Tailored for near-shore fishing in Prince William Sound, Freeberd boasts twin-jet propulsion and a shallow-draft design.
The seiner has a draft of only two feet heading out before fishing and weighing in at 40 tons, but when returning fully loaded with 140,000 pounds of salmon in its hold, weighing 118 tons, it becomes a four-foot-draft.
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May 2025
Onboard power is provided by a MER 65 kW generator, which also powers the hold’s refrigeration.
Durtschi says he won’t know exactly how many tons of fish can fit in the hold until the end of the season, which starts in May.
“It’s got joystick control, and that’s ideal, or we wouldn’t have gone that big,” Durtschi says. “The old wooden seiners had a 10- to 12-foot draft, but that wouldn’t get close to the beach or the hatcheries.”
Engineering F/V Freeberd at the Bay Welding shipyard in Homer.
Photo Credit: Matt Lowber
Another feature that will come in handy, he says, are the twin jets that allow for a more precise positioning of the vessel. “Maneuvering with the jets in shallow spaces will be very helpful,” he says. “Having the jets is kind of a new thing.”
Smaller boats have a fish finder, a modest sonar that can see where the fish are, up to about 20 feet below the surface of the water. But Freeberd has a Panoptix PS70 thru-hull live-view sonar transducer offering real-time images to 1,000 feet below the surface.
“Until we go out and see what it looks like, then we’ll know how deep it is,” Durtschi says.
The seiner is powered by two 750-horsepower John Deere engines, enough to take the boat up to 10 knots.
There’s a captain’s stateroom and a forward v-berth with four bunks in the bow of the boat. Fuel capacity is 1,600 gallons, and 500 gallons of freshwater are stored in twin 250-gallon tanks.
Bay Welding General Manager Eric Engebretsen, son of founder Allen Engebretsen, says the seiner was something he dreamed of building since he started seine fishing as a young man.
“It’s important to me, personally, as a dream come true,” he says. “It’s a perfect boat for Alaska fisheries.”
Regardless of its large size, he says Freeberd is as nimble as a skiff.
“We solved a lot of problems with this boat, to build it to last,” he says. “This boat is capable of fishing anywhere in Alaska.”
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