With water everywhere, boats are essential for work and play in Alaska

Typically, summer work or recreation in Alaska requires a boat. You can walk, take a horse or fly somewhere. But eventually, water is going to impede your progress. After all, there are more than a million lakes in our state, uncounted creeks and rivers and more coastline than can be walked in a lifetime.

Sometimes rafts and small boats are enough. Early military explorer Frederick Schwatka carried fold-boats in the late 1800s when he traveled across country from Kluane to Cordova. But some ventures require floaty things a little larger.

I've just returned from Bristol Bay, a place loaded with boats. There are eight-foot dingys fishermen use to paddle from the beach to a larger boat.  Twenty-foot skiffs are used in setnet operations. Thirty-two-foot gillnetters drift for sockeye. And all manner of bigger craft pick up salmon from fishermen and tender them to processing facilities.

One of these tenders is an old flat-bottomed, diesel-powered wood barge named the Porpoise. The Porpoise is one of a fleet of scows built from heavy timber 70 or 80 years ago to pick up sockeye from fishermen in shallow sections of Bristol Bay.

Some were named for birds, such as the Petrel and the Puffin. Others were named for animals, such as the Bear, the Wolf and the Beaver. Flat-bottomed and unwieldy, they are powered by two big diesel engines that push them through the bay's ripping tides.

Some of these old tenders have been mothballed or taken out of service. Despite being glued together by talented shipwrights, most have issues with rotting timber and leaks.

The old Porpoise is one of the larger scows. Piloted for the past 12 years by 81-year-old Glenn Dony of Hammond, Oregon, she tenders fish from the Upper Kvichak River setnet sites.

Originally the Porpoise worked for Columbia Ward Cannery. Sockeye were delivered to the salmon processing facility in Naknek River. Today, a couple of owner changes later, she still picks up fish and delivers them to the same location. North Pacific Fisheries operates the Red Salmon facility today.

Where she delivers matters little. Dony has eased the old barge alongside the fish ladder at Red Salmon for all three companies, though her leaking timbers and aging stern posts may take her from service soon. Still, it remains far less expensive to do extensive maintenance than replace her. A new barge would cost more than a million dollars.

Whether we're talking about big fish tenders or smaller craft, cost is always a factor.

A guy named Doyle Carlson out of Kenai, built aluminum setnet skiffs for three decades beginning in the 1970s. Doyle knew how to weld and understood stress points. Many of his skiffs remain in service today. I own one that has had more than two million pounds of salmon cross its gunwales and has worked in Bristol Bay, Prince William Sound and traveled the length of the Yukon River more than once. The cost to build that skiff was $1,800. Today, an aluminum skiff costs 10 times that.

I traveled the Yukon River with my Carlson skiff for five years in the mid-1970s. Launching from Nenana or Manley Hot Springs in May, I encountered folks who lived along the Yukon and used their skiffs for travel or commercial fishing work. The Yukon River is the freeway of Interior Alaska.  In addition to small river boats, barges deliver fuel and supplies to Yukon villages all summer.

One such barge, the Brainstorm, worked the Upper Yukon and the Porcupine River upstream to the Canadian village of Old Crow in the early 1970s.  In fact, the Yukon Delta used to see many 20-foot wood skiffs that were low-sided with an upswept bow to deal with big standing waves in the delta.  Today, aluminum has taken over as the material of choice and Lund boats are common.

The middle Yukon, with its easy weather and good cover, sees mostly flat-bottom metal boats. The only thing that has really changed with the boats of the Yukon is their power source.  The original 30-foot wood boats were long and narrow, allowing them to navigate economically with little power.  Two-cycle outboards came on the scene and river boats were able to stretch a bit wider. The new four-cycles and the tendency toward bigger and faster has created a new larger class of boat with V-hulls.

Canoes and rafts of the 1970s, in which adventurers explored the Yukon River from Dawson City to the coast, are largely a thing of the past. I used to pass several dozen on trips from Alakanuk to Manley in late summer. These adventuresome guys and gals are relatively rare today. Yukon tributaries catch most of the traffic, with rafts and folding kayaks the crafts of choice. Portable boats can be flown in to the headwaters and picked up from any village or sandbar.

Forty-four years ago, I spent more than a month on the Porcupine River in an 14-foot river boat I built, encountering only one other traveler below Old Crow the entire month of June. The Porcupine isn't exactly clogged with folks in these days, either, but after the middle of June one will certainly see more than a vessel per day.

Vehicles pulling something that will float — usually something well-powered — are common on Alaska roadways. There are a number of kayaks and canoes too.  Peer into the backs of trucks and SUVs and you'll find a few rafts.

The latest scourge of Alaska waterways are the stand-up paddleboards.  (Why would one want a boat without sides?) One's watercraft of choice matters little, but in a state with a million lakes, one must be able to float.

John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.