Hybrid electric fishing boat gets traditional send-off in Sitka
- Daily Sitka Sentinel
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Anna Laffrey
Daily Sitka Sentinel
A decade of work on a hybrid electric boat propulsion project culminated Thursday as U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski shattered a bottle of champagne on the bow of the F/V Mirage, and saw it move under electric power along the dock at Sitka's Gary Paxton Industrial Park.
Tradesmen worked at the industrial park over the past year to install the hybrid propulsion system on the Mirage, completing the first phase of a federally-funded Alaska Longline Fishermen's Association initiative to fit three boats with battery-electric motors.
F/V Mirage skipper Jeff Turner returned Wednesday night from the offshore black cod fishing grounds in order for Murkowski to tour the vessel during her brief visit to Sitka.
Turner is using his troll and longline fishery operations to break in his vessel's new battery-electric motors.
"It runs nice and quiet the way it's supposed to, and it's powerful enough to haul black cod pots from 300 fathoms — 40-pot strings, over and over and over and over," Turner told the Sentinel.
With the hybrid system, Turner can run to and from the fishing grounds using the boat's diesel engine, and then switch to electric mode for trolling or longlining, or to cruise at slower speeds.
As Turner is learning the new technology and adjusting it to his vessel, he's leaning on the technical expertise of energy scientist Chandler Kemp and electrician Ben Matthys, who spent years bringing the project to life.
“They’re my pacifiers," Turner said. "When things go wrong, I text them pictures of what everything is doing. If I see an error message, I send it to them and they tell me 'try this.'"
As Murkowski arrived at the industrial park Thursday, 28 people — tradesmen, three Mirage crewmen, ALFA staff and partners — gathered in a circle on the dock.
ALFA executive director Linda Behnken introduced Turner, Kemp, Matthys, marine electrician Dan Cooper and marine fabricator Jeremy Serka as members of the team that made the project a reality.
Serka, of Sitka Custom Marine, provided the shop space, materials and equipment needed for the project.
He helped rebuild Turner's propulsion system and redesign the Mirage engine room, as well as the cabin, to make way for the battery-electric equipment.
"Everything got moved except for the generator and the freezer system," Serka told the Sentinel. "It was a lot to do in a short amount of time."
Serka said that the most exciting challenge came early this year, just before the team was scheduled to commission the vessel.
"We realized the engine showed up with the wrong flywheel — from the factory, they put in the wrong flywheel, so there was no starter we could get to actually engage that flywheel," Serka said. "So we had to figure that out, and then pull apart the engine, get a new flywheel, replace it, you know, overnight, essentially, to make this work, and that was a big challenge."
ALFA board member Terry Perensovich chimed in: "That's the thing about cutting edge, all those problems get discovered so the next guy that does this will know what to anticipate.
"Henry Ford didn't start with an assembly plant, right?" Perensovich said. "He was in the barn figuring out how to build a car."
After meeting the team members, Murkowski asked Turner why he decided to make his boat available for hybrid-electric conversion.
Turner said he was initially drawn to the project to "be greener, maybe save money."
Now that he's fishing with the hybrid vessel, the absence of noise "is something I really notice," Turner said. "A quiet boat is fatigue-free. You can talk in a normal voice, you don’t have to yell across the deck.”
Murkowski said that with the way fuel prices are going, Turner should feel good about pioneering the hybrid technology.
"Everyone’s going to be looking at you with ‘electric envy,'” she said.
Behnken noted that the team is preparing to install an all-electric inboard power system on the F/V Energizer, a Juneau gillnet boat that's now in Serka's shop.
Before christening the F/V Mirage by breaking a bottle of champagne, Matthys led Murkowski on an inspection tour of the hybrid vessel.
"I felt like a fish out of water," Matthys said of his time in the engine room with the senator. "It was cool to discuss the challenges of fitting things in boats, and looking at opportunities to do this for the fleet. ... We need U.S. manufacturing to have capacity to make these goodies, batteries, all of that."
Kemp, an assistant professor of sustainable energy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Bristol Bay campus, traveled to Sitka for the christening Thursday.
He joined the ALFA project team in 2016, beginning by researching energy efficiency on boats. Ten years later, Kemp said it's surprising to be showing a U.S. Senator a completed, hybrid-electric fishing vessel.
The success is due largely to fishermen who were invested in the project, and the professionals in Sitka who supported installation of the hybrid-electric system, Kemp said.
"I think the work that we're doing now really lays the groundwork for if, in the future, folks did want to have an operation that was fully powered by renewable energy," Kemp said. "So it's really exciting to get to this point, and it's interesting to think about what comes next."
