Tale of the R/V Annika Marie; the trials of a Prudhoe Bay boat business.

• Author: Kaynor, Carol

It's a hundred-thousand-dollar disease, and Bill Kopplin has it bad. For seven years, Kopplin worked as a marine technician at the University of Alaska Institute of Marine Sciences. He was the sensible sort - saving his money, carefully investing, staying out of debt.

But he grew tired of the price for his sensibility: "I could see that I wasn't going anywhere - that I was going to be a technician the rest of my life." So in 1982 Kopplin traded in his sensibility for a research vessel that cost $137,000.

In the summer of 1981, Woodward-Clyde Consultants, one of many contractors performing environmental research for ongoing oil exploration on the North Slope, asked Kopplin to work as a logistics coordinator at Prudhoe Bay. The experience convinced Kopplin that Prudhoe Bay was the place to be.

"I realized that was where a lot of work was being done, more so than any other place in the state at that time. I also noticed that there wasn't a decent research vessel up there for hire. That's when I decided to buy the boat," he says.

Kopplin knew nothing about owning and operating a small business, nor had he any experience in leasing out research vessels. He had spent several years at sea as a marine technician, though, so he had a good idea of what clients would need in a research vessel. His savings gave him a good financial base from which to start. Most importantly, he had the drive and initiative necessary to carry his business through the startup phase.

With a rough idea of the cost of the size research vessel he wanted, Kopplin applied for a $50,000 loan through the Commercial Fisheries and Agriculture Bank in spring 1982. "I had a tentative contract with Woodward-Clyde before I bought the boat and I think that was the luckiest thing, because it gave the bank something real to grasp," he says.

With the CFAB loan approved, more than $30,000 from his own savings and a personal loan, Kopplin went shopping. After looking at several boats, and finding prices higher than he'd anticipated, Kopplin decided on a 43-foot charter vessel named Paisano, moored in Washington.

Kopplin liked the layout of the boat and the way it was constructed. The company that built it was well-known and reliable. The boat was more expensive than Kopplin had expected, but he had a feeling it would work out.

He knew less than he realized about boats. The Paisano was well built, but had not been well maintained. And though the price was above what Kopplin had planned on, it was relatively...