![]() Branch, the general manager of the company’s salmon operation. Among other things, that company owned a cannery in Bristol Bay. The couple learned it had been built in 1929 at a shipyard on Lake Washington for the Libby, McNeil and Libby Company. Despite the daunting process of resurrecting the David B, Christine quickly fell in love with the old boat. The David B was in such sorry shape that had the Smiths not purchased the boat it would likely have soon been scrapped and burnt. “I knew right away that it was the David B.” “We were looking for a boat with a really cool history,” Jeffery said over the phone this June, 17 years later, as he and Christine were taking a break from readying the David B to journey from their home in Bellingham to Southeast Alaska. ![]() Christine looked at the rotting 65-foot relic, then at her husband, and felt a tightening in her stomach when it became obvious Jeffery was smitten. The young couple were dreaming of buying and refurbishing a boat into a small cruise ship. When Jeffery and Christine Smith were shown the David B, an ancient Bristol Bay tug, known as a monkey boat, it appeared that every cormorant in Washington State had been pooping on it for decades.
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