Roughly three years ago I bought this 26 foot Anderson with our good friends here in Santa Barbara. "The Double Edge" was built in 1988 here in Santa Barbara by Bill Anderson. Bill designed these boats to carry heavy loads of urchins and abalone across the rough seas of the Santa Barbara channel without broaching. Divers had previously been using east coast style boats with keels, but they could not handle the weight of the urchins while riding down swell in rough seas and several of them flipped. The Andersons and Radons became the boat of choice for our waters.
The Double Edge was built for the Pettersen family who have been working these waters since 1988. Many of our friends and people that I've looked up to have cut their teeth as divers and tenders on this boat from Miles Wallace to Chris Brown. This boat has been worked hard and has tons of stories.
When we had the opportunity to keep this boat here in Santa Barbara we couldn't resist. I have always dreamed of having a boat here in the harbor and the last few years have been so epic fishing, diving, and adventuring on this boat. It was quite a learning experience keeping the twin diesel Inboard outboard set up operating. I had many of trips coming home on one engine, trying to learn what had failed, and then fixing it. I've been lucky to have several people who have helped me learn a ton on the mechanical side to help trouble shoot and be safe. The reality is the 1997 engines and old outdrives are on their last leg and have been very hard to keep going. They are also tier 0 motors and are very pollutant.
We've maintained the boat as commercial and have been fishing halibut and seabass as well as trying to keep a few dive trips going on the boat with permitted divers. By doing so, we were able to qualify for the APCD program here to receive some of a grant to help clean up our tier 0 motors.
With lots of talking and discussions with Eddie Anderson (son on bill who know owns and operates Anderson Custom Boats and just all around legendary dude) on trying to come up with the best solution to repower our boat, we've come up with a plan. Since our boat is in a slip, having two outdrives exposed to the electrolysis in the harbor makes maintaining them very challenging. They need annual service which is costly and takes time away from the boat being used. So, we decided to go through more work up front to reconfigure the boat and install a single motor with a v drive. It's going to require quite a bit of fiberglass work up front, but once done, the boat should ride and perform better and the only thing that will be exposed to the salt water will be the shaft and propeller.
We pulled the boat out on April 7th and over the next couple of weeks I worked on stripping everything off of the boat. Everything, and I mean every nut and bolt had to get stripped off. I pulled both of the motors, the compressor, volume tank, and both outdrives. Here are some photos of the journey so far. I'm going to try and put together some videos and progress reports on the project so stay tuned!
For now, here are some photos. Video to follow.
