Homer beach haulout: new entrepreneur brings ancient knowledge to Kachemak Bay.

• Author: Klouda, Naomi
• Position: ENTREPRENEURS

An ancient process for hauling ships out of the water for repairs has gained a lot of attention in Homer this past year, an engineering feat that saves time and money for large vessel owners that used to require far-away shipyards.

Alaska statesman Clem Tillion of Halibut Cove, for one, needed work done on the sixty-five-foot MV Stormbird. His World War II era ship is a former Army T Boat built to perform light towing, cargo, and personnel transportation. Today, it's the mail runner from Homer to the cove. Tillion says he's had to travel to Bellingham, Washington, in the past to get repairs--expensive in both time and money.

Last spring, he was able to get repairs completed more handily and less expensively on Homer's beach.

Logistics for heavy steel ships like the Stormbird call for airbags specially manufactured in China to carry up to fifteen thousand tons of steel out of the water-paired with time-tested techniques used by ancient Egyptians. It is done by Earl Brock's Salvage and Sales.

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Once Earl Brock, the entrepreneur who developed the method, orchestrates their haul out, the vessels sit on dry land near the Pier One Theatre on the Homer Spit to get repaired by marine tradesmen. Since Homer doesn't yet have a heavy vessel haulout facility, the process for pulling these behemoth boats out of the water is a large logistical undertaking that until Brock recently wasn't done routinely at Alaska harbors. Northern Boat Enterprises of Homer routinely hauls out vessels under sixty-five feet, serving a huge fleet of charter boats, fishing vessels, and pleasure cruisers. But when it came to larger vessels in the past, Homer boats needed to go elsewhere.

"I had to figure the process out. I had no mentor and few resources when I started [in 2006]," Brock says. "I watched them do it on an easy boat and thought, T would never do it that way.'"

Brock has hauled out boats in Nome, Bethel, and other coastal areas for the past nine years. He brought his operation to Homer when requests came in last year.

A succession of more than a dozen vessels sat onshore near the Homer harbor to get their work done in 2014. The advantage allows big vessels to remain near their own home port, instead of expensive travel to one of Alaska's shipyards in Seward, Kodiak, Ketchikan, or Dutch Harbor--or farther away to Puget Sound shipyards.

"All of the shipyards have their own circumstances," Brock says. "You might wait six months in Ketchikan to get...