FAIRHAVEN, MA – Eastern rigs were once the mainstay of the New England offshore fleet. But these classics also are what Point Pleasant, NJ-based brothers Arthur and Ken Ochse learned to fish on.
Getting started as youngsters, between them now the two have almost 100 years of fishing experience. So when it came time to build a new steel boat a few years back, there was no doubt what they’d be shopping for.
The 95′ Christian and Alexa, an eastern-rigged scalloper built at Bock Marine of Beaufort, NC in 1988.
(Steven Kennedy photo)
“We built an eastern rig because that’s all we were ever on,” Arthur laughed. “There are advantages. You only need one pilothouse, and you can really see the people on deck. You know what’s going on. People don’t realize it, but if I’m running this boat at the dock, I can see the whole boat. I tried to dock a shrimp boat for a guy one time and was in the front of the boat thinking, ‘Where is everything here?’”…
Read the rest and much, much more in the November issue of Commercial Fisheries News. Read online immediately and download for future reference.
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