49-foot Crabber Fits the Bill for Crescent City Fisherman
ROBERT WAKEFIELD BEGAN FISHING OUT OF CRESCENT CITY ON THE northern California coast in 1977 and soon decided he wanted a boat of his own. By 1979, he had become the owner of a small wooden boat, and has worked his way through several more over the last 40 years. His son Troy started fishing with him in 2007, and went full time in 2009. Since then, they’ve fished primarily for Dungeness crab and prawn and trolled for salmon on an older wooden trawler.
Robert still appreciates the lines of a traditional design, but he has done his fair share of maintenance and repairs on wooden hulls and was ready to upgrade to a new fiberglass boat for the rest of his career. He was looking for a good-looking combo hull with a bit more beam, a lot more capacity, a modern pilothouse and cabin, ...