Both the Baranof and Courageous were Coast Guard 180 ft.Cactus class bouy tenders whose icebreaker hulls were built in the early 1940’s. The Baranof original name was the Balsam and was built in Duluth, Minnesota. The Courageous was called the Tupelo and was built at Curtis Bay, Maryland. The Balsam underwent conversion to the F/V Baranof in 1978 in Seattle at Sealand Asssociates and theTupelo became the Courageous in early 1979 at the same facility.

Both boats began fishing in the late 1970’s as crab catcher processors, which meant they caught and processed their catch onboard instead of delivering live crab to a shoreside processor. After the King Crab collapse of the early 1980’s both boats spent several years fishing sablefish with longline traps or pots with the subsequent harvest history evolving into the issuance of IFQ quota shares of which Baranof Fisheries still retains and the boats still harvest under a royalty agreement to Baranof Fisheries.

By the late 1990’s up until the present time both boats were primarily longlining for Pacific Cod or sablefish with king crab still occurring in October as short seasons less than a week. However both boats were able to stay busy 9 to 10 months a year which was fortunate as most crab only vessels were fishing 3 weeks or less annually by 2004.