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The 45-foot crabber Darean Rose was sponsoned 2 1/2 feet on each side. Giddings Boatworks photo.
It’s been 14 years, but if you watched Season 2 of the “Deadliest Catch,” you might still recognize the Aleutian Ballad that was at
Giddings Boatworks in Coos Bay, Ore., this September. Only today she’s not the Bering Sea crabber she was on the show.
The Aleutian Ballad, operating out of Ketchikan, Alaska, has her deck filled not with crab pots when she leaves the dock, but with people. The former crabber is now a tour boat with ex-Bering Sea fishermen as crew, telling up to 150 guests in stadium seating on the main deck what life on a 110-foot fishing boat is like and showing them how to set and retrieve longline gear and crab pots, all in a three-hour tour that includes some favorite eagle sites. They call it the Bering Sea Crab Fisherman’s Tour.