Port Orford, Oregon, Dolly Harbor

Linda and I have been visiting the southern Oregon coast for a week.  We rented a house at the beach in Gold Beach and used it as a base to explore the surrounding area.

  Since then, we have visited the small fishing harbor at Port Orford several times.

 We had two wonderful seafood dinners, enjoyed spectacular ocean views, and even photographed California gray whales, but what interested me most was the unique harbor.

Port Orford harbor is one of just six dolly ports in the world.  The port has no bar to cross, which allows boats to go out to sea more often than boats in other ports, but also means there isn’t a safe place to dock.  So the boats are hoisted out of the water with huge cranes and placed on dollies for storage on the pier.  How do they get the boats onto the pier?

A crane lifts the boat out of the water,

It swings the boat toward the home-made dolly.

Men line it up with the dolly using ropes.

The boat is lowered carefully.

The 25 ton capacity crane is unhooked.

A little pickup is hooked up to tow the boat to its parking place on the pier.

These boats are used to catch crab, rock fish, cod, salmon, sea urchin, and more.  I’ll bet some of their catch went to Griff’s restaurant right there on the pier.  Wonderful fresh seafood!

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