Sea Bear was originally named Forester. She was built in 1932 for the U.S. Forest Service ranger boat fleet in Alaska. Designed by the famed boatbuilder H.C. Hanson, she has purple heart stem and keel, 5.5-inch-thick oak ribs on 13-inch centers, and Douglas fir decks and planks. She served from 1932 to 1964.
After leaving the Forest Service in 1964, she went into private ownership and was renamed Sea Bear, working first as part of a bear-guiding operation, and then as a timber skidder, all in Southeast Alaska.
Her current owners, Alaska-based fisheries biologists David and Darcy Saiget, feel it was fate that brought the U.S. Forest Service ranger boat Sea Bear to them. They said that see themselves as caretakers of a legacy rather than as boat owners.
She has berths for six, a day bunk in the wheelhouse, two heads, a shower, a genset, a refrigerator and freezer, a Dickinson oil stove, a freshwater maker, and an ice maker. With tankage for 800 gallons of fuel, she cruises at 8 knots at 1350 rpm, burning 7.5 gallons per hour.
📸 David and Darcy Saiget
