By Alan Haig-Brown
At the mouth of the Fraser River the tides routinely have a 12-ft. range. Fortytwo miles upriver at Mission the coastal mountains are beginning to crowd the flat farmland but still the tidal range is frequently six feet. No salt water reaches this far as the tide only serves to back up the river water. But the river can slow to a crawl from the pressure of the flood tide and with the combined ebb and river current the flow can be dramatic. This is no place for the faint of heart, especially when operating a towboat in the river currents. But this is the routine for the operators of the boats at Catherwood Towing based in Mission BC. Much of the work involves moving booms from storage along the river side to lumber and shingle mills that are also along the river. The booms are made up in 60 by 60-ft. sections and are chained together. Capt. Butch Salsbury on Cahterwood's Sea Imp X explains that when he started with the company 22 years ago they would often deliver enough sections to a sawmill to last them for a week, but now, with escalating log prices the mills want the logs delivered one or two sections at a time, "And they want it right now," he laughs. That is why he is enthusiastic about the repower that the Sea Imp X got last year. "We took out a pair of 400 hp engines and put in a pair of 500 hp Cummins KTA19 engines," says company founder and president Ernie Catherwood, "Now that boat really gets up and goes, I wish I was still running the boats," he adds. A 36-ft. 1000 hp twin-screw tug is a long way from where Ernie started back in 1971. He spent some youthful years working as a boom man with his dad and got to run a small boom boat from time to time. Like most young men he wandered a bit and had some adventures including winning the log rolling contest in the Logger's Sports at Osaka's Expo `70, but when the time came to get serious about life his dad suggested he buy a tug boat. The Sea Imp was a wooden hulled rivertug with a Jimmy 6-71 that put out a grand total of 165 HP. The work was mostly moving booms a short distance from storage to the cedar shake mills near Mission. Not one to stand still, Ernie Catherwood worked extra shifts and made enough money to qualify for a bank loan and built his first steel boat the Sea Imp III In 1980 which was just in time to see the sky rocketing interest rates of the early 1980s. The challenges of high interest were an important business lesson. The solution was more hard work and an expansion of his towing territory to inJune 2009
clude yarding logs up from the mouth of the river and even towing barge loads of cedar shake bolts from up coast logging operations.
These were challenging orders for small tugs but they were profitable and Catherwood survived the interest peaks and added boats to his fleet. He chose a
respected brand of engines for his new boats but when he bought the Cumminspowered Promoter from another operator he was pleased. "The power impressed
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