When Justin and Sarah Yager bought Sarah’s grandfather’s boat the BJ Thomas in 2018, they realized they’d have to put some serious work into the 90-foot by 22-foot Gulf of Mexico shrimper at some point. But a fire on the night or Feb. 27, 2019, wrecked the boat, and they had to do it sooner than expected.
“The fire started in the galley and spread down into the engine room,” says Justin Yager, talking from offshore. The Coast Guard used bay water to put out the fire, ruining all the systems. “We didn’t save much from the old boat,” says Yager. “We pretty much gutted her. We cut off the bow; we cut off the stern. We didn’t save any of the old systems, the electric, the mechanical, the plumbing.”
A devastating Feb. 27, 2019 fire on the B.J. Thomas set the stage for her conversion. Sarah Yager photo.
According to Yager, the forward fish hold, the engine room, and a bit of the forepeak are all that remain of the old boat with a very different boat built around it — and a new name, the Dauntless. “My friends told me if she comes out of the yard as the BJ Thomas, it’ll always be the BJ Thomas, this was the time.”
The Dauntless originated as a Gulf of Mexico shrimp boat built at Marine Builders in Mobile, Ala., in 1976. Sarah Whaley Yager’s grandfather Lloyd Whaley bought the boat at auction in Crescent City, Calif., decades later. The elder Whaley fished for crab and shrimp before selling the boat with all permits to Justin and Sarah Yager.
“We always knew we’d have to sponson her,” says Justin Yager. “The fire forced our hand.” They towed the damaged vessel 70 miles south to Fred Wahl Marine in Reedsport, Ore.
“We got her down there in late April,” he says. “Usually when you’re going to do this you plan for a year. But this caught us by surprise. It was late May or maybe later before we knew what we were going to do.”
According to Yager, Scott Kent, engineer at Fred Wahl did the design work for the transformation of the BJ Thomas into the Dauntless. “Scott drew everything up, and Fred oversees it,” says Yager. “They did it all in house. I like that. It’s really good to have everything, all the engineering and design, done by the people who are doing the work. It simplifies everything. To have a boat in a yard is expensive and hard enough.”
The B.J. Thomas underway from Newport, Ore. with a load of crab traps. Sarah Yager photo.
Besides widening the boat by eight feet, they built up a raised fo’c’sle and built a new wheelhouse above that. “The way she’s designed — wider sponsons — should be able to fish tougher weather,” says Yager. “With the raised fo’c’sle, when she lays down you won’t have water coming over the bulwarks.” Yager notes that the bulbous bow is also the freshwater tank, and helps add to stability.
While the Yagers decided to expand the aft fish hold, they left the forward fish hold and engine room the same.
“We just left voids,” says Yager. “The engine room is simple, it doesn’t have a lot of machinery. There’s no RSW,” refrigerated sea water system. Yager points out that the new hydraulics system is electronically controlled. “There’s no clutches, nothing off the engine,” he says. “It’s modernized. Everything is updated, but it’s simple and bulletproof.”
Yager opted for a Cummins QSK-19, 750-hp main engine and a Twin Disc for 800-hp with 5:1 reduction, turning a 5-inch Aquamet 17 shaft, and a 65.5 inch five-blade wheel.
“We have a 150-kW Cummins. QSB 7 genset for the hydraulics and everything, and a 100-kW John Deere 4045 genset for back up. And then we have a 30-kW Isuzu for the hotel.”
On deck, Yager has the winches that were on the boat when it caught fire. “They’re Yaquina winches,” he says. “They’ve been rebuilt and gone through. Wahl’s or Seven Hills are going to build the net reel.”
The Dauntless has all new hatches, flush with a raised wooden deck. “It lets the water go, so it’s not where the guys are standing,” says Yager. The raised wooden deck also covers hydraulic lines and keeps them protected.
On the port side of the raised fo’c’sle, the Yagers added a bait freezer; inside are crew’s quarters for a total of eight. “We have two staterooms with four bunks,” says Yager. “And another bunk in the captain’s stateroom.” Above the raised fo’c’sle sits the new wheelhouse with a new suite of electronics.
Yager, talking at the end of a long day hauling Dungeness crab gear, tries to remember everything. “I know we’re getting a Simrad autopilot. And we have the WASSP. We’ve got a Furuno 1150 down sounder, and a Furuno 2117 radar. The plotter is running TimeZero.” Yager notes that connecting the TimeZero to the WASSP transducer proved to be the easiest option for him to have a glitch-free bottom-building program. “We have a tag-phone, it’s a satellite phone, where you can talk free from boat to boat, but you have to pay to call home. But we don’t have satellite TV like those Alaska boats.”
Yager has been fishing for more than 20 years. “How’d I get into it? Bad luck, I guess. Misfortune. I started with an old guy here in a 42-footer. I was always pushing him to fish harder and he said, ‘If you want to work that hard you better get your own boat. You can buy this one.’”
Yager bought the old plywood boat, “the Dawn Treader, we fished albacore, crab, halibut openings, longlined for blackcod, everything. I don’t miss those days.”
But those years of experience have gone into making the Dauntless. “It’s the biggest project I’ve ever done,” says Yager. “And a lot of money. The insurance paid a million of a 3-1/2- to 4 million dollar project.”
But still, he’s being careful with those dollars. “We want it done right,” says Yager. “We want her to have everything she needs. Super functionality, but not totally blinged out.”
To pay it all back, Yager is going to focus on fishing for crab and shrimp. “We’ll crab and then trawl for fish for a little while, then shrimp, then trawl, then crab again.”
The Yager children stand in front of what began as their great-grandfathers boat. Justin Yager photo.
When fishing and shrimping, Yager will use some additional electronics. “I have a Simrad FX80 trawl monitor so I can see what’s going in the net,” he says.
When shrimping, Yager tows two 90-foot nets off the outriggers. “We’ve come a long way since the ’90s,” he says. “With the lights on the nets now and everything, it’s a very clean fishery.” While he notes that knotless twine and bycatch reduction has reduced bycatch and made shrimping more efficient, like most others he still uses the slotted wooden doors that have been used in shrimp trawling for decades. “You’d think they would have come up with something new, but everybody seems to have the best luck with wood doors.”
Pacific Seafood buys most of the shrimp Yager catches, but when shrimping he sometimes lands his catch in other ports.
“We wander around a lot. One day we might be fishing off Washington, and two days later we’re down off California. It depends on where the shrimp are.” According to Yager, that can vary from 50 to a 150 fathoms depth, and anywhere from two to 35 miles off the coast.
While there are ups and downs, Yager is optimistic about the future. “Overall the fishery is doing well,” he says.
That he and his family are investing big in the Dauntless says more than words.
Inside the Dauntless (ex-BJ Thomas)
Home port: Newport, Ore.
Owners: Justin and Sarah Yager
Builder: Originally built for Sarah Yager’s grandfather, L. Whaley by Marine Builders in Mobile, Ala.
Conversion: Fred Wahl Marine Construction in Reedsport, Ore.
Hull material: Steel
Year built: Built 1976, conversion 2019-20
Fishery: Crab and shrimp
Length: Originally 90 feet; now 86 feet 1 inch
Beam: Originally 22 feet; now 29 feet 6 inches
Draft: 10 feet
Engine: Cummins QSK-19 750-hp
Gensets: 150-kW Cummins QSB7, 100-kW John Deere 4045HF285, 30-kW Isuzu
Power train: Twin Disc 5:1, 5-inch C1045 forward shaft; Aquamet 17 shaft, 65.5-inch five-blade wheel
Fuel capacity: Was 12,000 gallons, almost doubled with conversion
Top speed: Approximately 12 knots; cruising: 9 knots
Hold capacity: Forward hold volume 1,635 cubic feet; 1,460 cubic feet aft
Electronics: Simrad autopilot, WASSP transducer, Furuno 1150 sounder, Furuno 2117 Radar; plotter running TimeZero, Simrad FX80 net monitor
Deck gear: Yaquina winches; net reel built in house at Fred Wahl Marine Construction
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